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THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY 



EDITED BY 

WILL D. HOWE 

FEOFE8SOB OF ENGLISH AT INDIANA UNIVEBSITT 



NINETEENTH CENTURY LETTERS 



The Modern Student's Library 

Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL 

By George Meredith. 
THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS. 

By William Makepeace Thackeray. 
THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE. 

By 'Thomas Hardy. 
BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. 
ADAM BEDE. 

By George Eliot. 
ENGLISH POETS OF THE EIGHTEENTH 

CENTURY. 
THE RING AND THE BOOK. 

By Robert Browning, 
PAST AND PRESENT. 

By Thomas Carlyle. 
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. 

By Jane Austen. 
THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN. 

By Sir Walter Scott. 
THE SCARLET LETTER. 

By Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. 
THE ESSAYS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVEN- 

SON. 
NINETEENTH CENTURY LETTERS. 
THE ESSAYS OF ADDISON AND STEELE. 
Each small 12mo. 75 cents net. 

Other volumes in preparation. 



THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY 



NINETEENTH CENTURY 
LETTERS 



SELECTED AND EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY 

BYEON JOHNSON REES 

PROFESSOB OF ENGLISH AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON 






Copyright 1899, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919 by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

Copyright 1885, 1909 by George Edward Woodberry 
Copyright 1908 by John Lane Company 
Copyright 1895, 1897 by the Macmillan Company 
Copyright 1886, 1890 by John G. Nicolay and John Hay 
Copyright 1914 by Helen G. Nicolay 
Copyright 1899, 1903 by the Century Company 
Copyright 1894 by Houghton, Mifflin Company 
Copyright 1887 by James Elliot Cabot 
Copyright 1894, 1907 by Samuel T. Pickard 
Copyright 1896 by John T. Morse, Jr. 
Copyright 1895 by Stone and Kimball 
Copyright 1875, 1903 by Harper & Brothers 
Copyright 1876 by G. Otto Trevelyan 
Copyright 1889 by G. Lewis Stackpole 
Copyright 19l7 by Elizabeth C. Harcourt 



MAR -3 1319 



7^ 



TO 
GRAHAM RYLE 



PREFACE 



The present volume is the result of an attempt to bring 
together within small compass, from the correspondence 
of well-known English and American authors of the Nine- 
teenth Century, letters that possess two, and in most in- 
stances, three characteristics. Though there are exceptions, 
the letters here submitted are usually typical of the writers; 
they furnish information as to literary conditions and rela- 
tionships; and they possess interest in themselves as examples 
of epistolary correspondence. Obviously allowance must 
be made for vagaries of judgment and taste. A letter that 
interests the editor because of some personal predilection 
may seem dull to many readers; and doubtless he has often 
failed through individual limitations, either of responsiveness 
or of knowledge, to include letters that should have been 
printed. Often he has somewhat wistfully rejected a good 
letter because it was already thoroughly familiar to readers. 
Now and then the law of copyright has hampered his free- 
dom of choice. 

Of the various kinds of writing, the letter most of all in- 
cites to annotation. The temptation to write foot-notes, 
those "voices that bark from the basement," is particularly 
strong when a reference to a somewhat obscure event, or 
an allusion to a matter familiar to but a small group of per- 
sons, makes its appearance. When tempted the editor has 
usually remembered that readers and students of literary 
letters are in most cases quite capable of making their own 
comments on the text, or that, if they are not, there is on 
this occasion no good excuse for annoying them. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction '. . xiii 

Acknowledgments xxiii 

WRITERS OF LETTERS 

THE DATES ARE THOSE OF THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF EACH 
WRITER 

PAGE 

1757-1827. William Blake 1 

1763-1855. Samuel Rogers 3 

1767-1849. Maria Edgeworth 4 

1769-1846. John Hookham Frere 10 

1770-1850. William Wordsworth 11 

1771-1845. Sydney Smith 23 

1771-1832. Sir Walter Scott ....... 35 

1772-1834. Samuel Taylor Coleridge .... 40 

1773-1850. Francis Jeffrey 60 

1774-1843. Robert Southey 67 

1775-1864. Walter Savage Landor 73 

1775-1834. Charles Lamb 78 

1764-1847. Mary Lamb 124 

1779-1852. Thomas Moore .128 

ix 



X CONTENTS 

PAGE 

1783-1859. Washington Irving 131 

1785-1859. Thomas DeQuincey 138 

1786-1846. Benjamin Robert Haydon .... 142 

1788-1824. Lord Byron 154 

1788-1845.. Richard Harris Barham .... 165 

1792-1822. Percy Bysshe Shelley 166 

1794-1878. William Cullen Bryant .... 177 

1795-1842. Thomas Arnold 181 

1795-1821. John Keats 183 

1795-1881 Thomas Carlyle ....'... 208 

1801-1866. Jane Welsh Carlyle 232 

1799-1845. Thomas Hood 247 

1799-1859. RuFus Choate 250 

1800-1859. Thomas Babington Macaulay ... 251 

1801-1890, John Henry Newman 258 

1803-1882 Ralph Waldo Emerson 260 

1804-1864. Nathaniel Hawthorne 263 

1806-1867. Nathaniel Parker Willis .... 269 

1806-1844. John Sterling 270 

1807-1882. Henry Wadsw^orth Longfellow . . 273 

1807-1892. John Greenleaf Whittier .... 280 

1809-1849. Edgar Allan Poe 283 

1809-1865. Abraham Lincoln 289 



CONTENTS xi 

PAGE 

1809-1883. Edward FitzGerald 291 

1809-1892. Alfred Tennyson *. . 333 

1809-1894. Oliver Wendell Holmes .... 336 

1811-1863. William Makepeace Thackeray . . 341 

1812-1870. Charles Dickens 366 

1812-1889. Robert Browning 390 

1806-1861. Elizabeth Barrett Browning . . . 394 

1812-1888. Edward Lear 406 

1814-1877. John Lothrop Motley 409 

1816-1855. Charlotte Bronte 414 

1817-1862. Henry David Thoreau 418 

1817-1881. James Thomas Fields 422 

1819-1900. John Ruskin 423 

1819-1891. James Russell Lowell 426 

1819-1892. Walt Whitman 457 

1819-1875. Charles Kingsley 458 

1819-1880. "George Eliot" 459 

1822-1888. Matthew Arnold 461 

1825-1895. Thomas Henry Huxley 469 

1828-1862. Fitz-James O'Brien 471 

1828-1882. Dante Gabriel Rossetti .... 471 

1828-1909. George Meredith 474 

1832-1898. "Lewis Carroll" 490 



xii CONTENTS 

PAGB 

1834-1896. William Morris 491 

1835-1893. Phillips Brooks 493 

1840-1893. John Addington Symonds .... 495 

1842-1881. Sidney Lanier 498 

1850-1894. Robert Louis Stevenson .... 500 

Appendix 535 



INTRODUCTION 



Of the numerous species of written discourse to which 
the human instinct for communicating thought and feehng 
has given rise, that most frequently and generally employed 
is without question the letter. It is the one type of com- 
position that approximately every one, whatever the degree 
of his literary attainment, finds it desirable and necessary 
after some fashion to cultivate. Novels, short stories, es- 
says, poems, plays, biographies, editorial articles, — these 
are, after all, the contribution of a relatively small number 
of writers; but Hhe literature of the letter' is always being 
unimaginably augmented through the activity of the people 
as a whole. Under such circumstances, circumstances that 
involve wholesale participation and infinite variety in pur- 
pose and adaptation, it is perhaps not surprising that at- 
tempts clearly to define the principles of excellence in letter- 
writing should have invariably failed. For the other species 
of literary activity, indeed, there are more or less familiar 
and adequate critical standards. Criticism, disseminated 
in some phase among all classes of readers and writers, has 
made it possible for almost any person to differentiate the 
novel, let us say, from the essay, or the play from an argu- 
ment; everybody, unless it be the more enthusiastic writer 
of 'new poetry,' recognizes the difference between prose and 
verse; but criticism has not yet pointed out satisfactorily 
the characteristics that all good letters possess, and has pro- 
mulgated no canons that commend themselves inevitably 
to any considerable body of good judges. We know of course 
that some letters are 'good' and that others are 'bad,' but 
what it is that effects the 'goodness,' other than those quali- 
ties that are common to memorable and felicitous writing 
in general, we are often at a loss to say. We are convinced 
that the letters of Cicero and of the younger Pliny are ex- 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

cellent, and those of Madame de Sevigne, Horace Walpole, 
Alexander Pope, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; but 
so are Sir Richard Steele's and Dean Swift's and Marjorie 
Fleming's. We regard Lord Chesterfield and William 
Cowper and Edward FitzGerald as notable writers of letters, 
but we insist that Sydney Smith and Jane Welsh and Ben- 
jamin Robert Haydon shall have honorable place. Doubt- 
less it would be possible to find traits common to the letters 
of all these writers, though it would perhaps be difficult, but 
the peculiar and individual excellence of the letter-writer, 
that which gives him distinction, would, in some cases at 
least, lie outside the critical scheme unless the scheme were 
so eclectic as to serve no really useful purpose. 

Though the task of adequately defining and describing 
the letter as a literary form may well be left to more fully 
developed criticism, it is permissible in the meantime to 
consider suggestions offered by experienced practitioners of 
Uhe gentle art.' James Russell Lowell, in excusing the dul- 
ness of one of his letters, says to his correspondent: "Worse 
than all is that lack of interest in one's self that comes from 
drudgery, — for I hold that a letter which is not mainly about 
the writer of it lacks the prime flavor. The wine must smack 
a little of the cask." Again he writes, "A letter ought al- 
ways to be the genuine and natural flower of one's disposi- 
tion." "Do you find," he says, in speaking of Richard Henry 
Dana, Jr., "do you find the real inside of him in his letters? 
I think not, and this is a pretty sure test." "It has been 
a hobby of mine," John Henry Newman wrote to his sister 
in 1863, "though perhaps it is a truism, not a hobby, that 
the true life of a man is in his letters. . . . Not only for 
the interest of a biography, but for arriving at the inside 
of things, the publication of letters is the true method. 
Biographies varnish, they assign motives, they conjecture 
feelings, they interpret Lord Burleigh's nods; but contem- 
porary letters are facts." 

Such expressions as "interest in one's self," "the natural 
flower of one's disposition," "the true life of a man," at once 
remind us that it is, indeed, very frequently the personality 
of the writer as revealed in his letters that commends ttrerrr 



INTRODUCTION xv 

to us. Lowell himself was a demonstration of the correct- 
ness of his view. He was a poet and his letters contain much 
that is poetic; he was an indefatigable student and his ad- 
venturous reading has left its mark on his correspondence; 
he was a college professor and a Minister to the Court of 
St. James; but it is not precisely as poet or scholar or public 
servant that he makes his impression upon us in the letters 
that have appeared since his death. What really appeals 
to us in them is the gradual disclosure of a thoroughly like- 
able man, a refined and winning yet stalwart New England 
gentleman, rich in the personal qualities that give grace and 
value to life. 

That the letters of Charles Lamb owe their fascination 
to their revelation of personality is obvious. Like the Essays 
of Elia, they cast and maintain their spell through the per- 
vasive presence of a fresh and surprising individuality. They 
are filled with wise and amusing utterances; they are often 
clever, joyous, hilarious; they are replete w^ith illuminating 
comment upon his own times and times long past; they are 
not infrequently superb examples of easy and graceful writ- 
ing; but their special worth is due to their subjectivity, to 
the clearness and fulness with which the writer himself ap- 
pears in them. The reader is assured after a time that he 
knows Charles Lamb through his letters much as he knows 
Dr. Johnson through the greatest of biographies. The two 
men have perhaps little in common, but they are alike in 
this, that their permanence in the affection of readers is due 
primarily to the charm of fully-revealed engaging personality. 
Lamb is "more than an author to those who know him," 
says Augustus Jessopp. " He is a presence, a presiding genius; 
he goes in and out with you, haunts you in the kindest, gentlest 
way." So complete is his mastery over his readers that they 
espouse his cause as if he were a friend whose name must 
be shielded from every stain. They deny that he drank to 
excess, that he smoked too much, even that he stammered 
more than was meet. They resent Carlyle's unsympathetic 
paragraph. They are contemptuous of those who speak 
of "poor Charles Lamb," of "gentle Charles." They re- 
mind us, as does Mr. Birrell, that he "earned his own living, 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

paid his own way, was the helper, not the helped; a man 
who was beholden to no one, who always came vrith gifts 
in his hand, a shrewd man capable of advice, strong in coun- 
cil." It is no slight testimony to the personality of a man, 
and to the symmetry and completeness of his self -portraiture, 
that three generations after his death readers should grow 
warm in discussion of his private character. 

Though Swinburne asserted that Edward FitzGerald gave 
*'Omar Khayyam a place forever among the greatest Eng- 
lish poets," it is not as translator and poet that he is likely 
to be longest cherished. Gorgeous and imposing though it 
is, the Rubdiydt, now that the languid pessimism of the last 
century has given place to a healthier mood, will hardly 
again make the impression that it made a few years ago. 
FitzGerald's letters, however, appear to be growing in favor 
year by year. Indeed, it is a comforting detail of literary 
history, in itself an indication of the essential soundness of 
taste, that since the publication of the first selection from 
his letters in 1889, FitzGerald should have gained the high 
place he now occupies in the fraternity of letter- writers. This 
position he is likely to retain, for he has come to it by the 
w^ay of genuine, spontaneous recognition. So substantial 
is his fame that probably most readers conversant with nine- 
teenth century correspondence consider him the choicest 
letter- writer of the period. His excellence, like that of Lowell 
and Lamb, is closely entwined with the subtle element of 
personality; but with FitzGerald there intrudes a special 
and piquant qualit}^ such as one does not perceive in the 
other two. About him there is a brooding melancholy; his 
very portraits express a 'vague trouble,' as if life had promised 
great things and then had duped him. Not that he ever 
says much about his feelings, unless they be pleasant ones: 
he is too much of a gentleman to inflict his troubles need- 
lessly upon his friends. But always, in his delicate humor, 
in his keen analyses of men and things, in his dainty and 
graceful descriptions of garden, field, and sea, in his leisurely 
and discriminating comments on his favorite authors and 
painters and composers, one detects a minor chord of pene- 
trating and ineluctable sadness. It is of course the more 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

mo\'ing because not distinctly heard; blent with laughter 
and gracious talk, it gains poignancy bj^ contrast and lends 
to the whole personality a sense of mystery that amply justi- 
fies Mr. Benson in calling him "the Hamlet of literature." 
Unless we are apprised of some particular contingency, 
we assume that by 'a letter' is meant a communication 
between two persons. So soon as the writer appears to ad- 
dress a group, or permits the supposition that what he writes 
^ill serve the interest of others besides his correspondent, 
his wTiting is no longer a letter as we habitually understand 
the term. In ^mting to Jane Welsh in 1822 Carlyle indi- 
cates his view of the matter. "It seems to me that the chief 
end of letters is to exhibit to each a picture of the other's 
soul, — of all the hopes and fears that agitate us, the joys and 
sorrow^s and varied anxieties in which a heart's-friend may 
be expected to sjmipathise: and if I maj^ trust my own judge- 
ment, this emploj^ment is even more useful (I say not a word 
of the delight attending it) than any other to which our im- 
perfect means of communication can be devoted." Such 
a 'picture,' obviously, it will not be possible to draw if the 
draughtsman must consider a variet}^ of judgments, a di- 
versity of degrees of s^^mpathy. When a student at Oxford 
in 1860, John Addington Symonds WTote to his sister: "I 
wish 3'ou would pay more attention to the writing of letters. 
I am not the proper person to read you a sermon upon this 
subject, because I do not think that the specimens I send 
3'Ou are at all what letters should be. Yet I labour under 
the disadvantage of wTiting to a mixed audience. You have 
only me to talk to, and, moreover, being a lady, are per- 
haps more bound to write good letters. I think 3^ou should 
consider more to whom you are writing, in each instance, 
and try to say something suitable to the tastes, &c., of the 
individual." "To speak of oneself is, they say, a privilege 
of friendship," wrote Jane Welsh, but to "speak of oneself" 
as the best letter-wTiters have done, and as she often did, is 
easy only in the simple relationship of single mind to single 
mind. It is characteristic of a good letter that it should 
seem to be overheard. When one learns that Pope adroitly 
effected the publication of his own letters, or that Lady Mary 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

exhorted her correspondents to keep her letters, alleging 
that they would be ''as good as Madame de Sevigne's forty 
years hence," or that Stevenson wrote some of his Vaihma 
letters with a view to their being published — an idea which 
he ultimately abandoned, — one's appreciation, though it re- 
mains keen, is radically modified. Judged simply as letters, 
one may venture to say, Steele's hurried, often illegible notes 
to the exacting Prue are superior to many of Stevenson's 
brilliant accounts of life in the South Seas. It is not merely 
that one's curiosity about Steele and his wife is gratified: 
rather, one feels that Steele's uncertain excuses are real 
letters, that they served as genuine communications between 
two persons, the only persons who were really concerned. 

Though it is typical of good letters that they should seem 
to be overheard, there is a certain limitation as to the degree 
of intrusion consistent with Hterary enjoyment. It is for 
this reason, most probably, that published love letters are 
usually unsatisfactory. When the reader is continually re- 
minded that he is trespassing upon privacy, that he is read- 
ing what the two persons originally interested would have 
wished unread by strangers, the legitimate pleasure that 
he normally takes in letters suffers from a sense of indelicacy. 
The time may come when the letters of John Keats to Fanny 
Brawne will not make readers uncomfortable, but it will be 
a time when Keats is far more remote than he is at present, 
as remote, let us say, as Dorothy Osborne seems to our gen- 
eration. In reading the Bro waning letters it is difficult to 
escape the suspicion that one is a vulgarian. What should 
be done with the love letters of men and women in whom 
the public has a certain right of ownership is a complicated 
question, but there can be no doubt that the early publica- 
tion of such letters is more or less shameful, or that their 
very intimacj" tends to obscure such intrinsic artistic merit 
as the}^ may possess. Just as one turns away when the face 
of a grown man is distorted with grief, one feels embarrass- 
ment in contemplating the superexaltation of a celebrated 
author in the experience of love. 

"Letters ought to be nothing but extempore conversation 
on paper," wrote Horace Walpole to Lady Ossory, and the 



INTRODUCTION xix 

expression reminds us that many letters owe their vitality 
to a characteristic quite distinct from those of personality 
and intimacy in the sense in which we think of those ele- 
ments in reading such men as Lamb or Lowell or FitzGerald. 
What "extempore conversation" meant to Walpale we may 
learn from his frequent characterizations of his own mental 
habit. " I am certainly the greatest philosopher in the world," 
he wrote to Conway in 1774, ''without ever having thought 
of being so; alwaj^s employed and never busy; eager about 
trifles and indifferent to everything serious. Well, if it is 
not philosoph}^, at least it is content." To be "eager about 
trifles" and "indifferent to everything serious" — this is a 
mood, heightened or softened in particular letter-writers, 
that often goes far to atone for the lack of an engaging per- 
sonality. It is not necessary to respect Horace Walpole to 
find his letters diverting. "Fiddles sing all through them," 
says Thackeray; "wax-lights, fine dresses, fine jokes, fine 
plate, fine coaches, glitter and sparkle there. Never was 
such a brilliant Vanity Fair as that through which he leads 
us." One may have but a moderate liking for Lord Byron 
as a man and yet relish his astonishing animation and facility. 
The "invincible confidence" of Wordsworth, the simple, 
unreflecting trust that Coleridge reposes in his own genius, 
the majestic sense of a high calling in Carlyle, the detach- 
ment of Shelley from ordinary human interests, the burning 
intensit}'^ of Keats, these are personal and subjective notes 
with which the readei- would wish to acquaint himself, but 
there are times when he does not desire to consider too cu- 
riously, when he is in no frame of mind to be improved, when 
it is a matter of relative indifference to him whether Pan- 
tisocracy was a thought purely celestial or merely mad. 
He is prepared on occasion to read Coleridge's solemn ar- 
raignment of Sou they, but "not now." He turns to Sj^dney 
Smith, who will not long be serious, or to Edward Lear, who 
cannot; or to Thomas Hood, or Holmes, or Thackeray, Or 
Meredith, who are likely to treat life lightly and pleasantly. 
A gentleman, according to Newman's classic definition, is 
"one who never infiicts pain." Of no small number of the 
best letters in the language it may be said that they illus- 



XX INTRODUCTION 

trate the considerateness and the reserve of the well-bred, 
and the cheerful if somewhat artificial vivacity of society. 
Their authors ignore the existence of annoyances or treat 
them as themes for subdued jesting. They indulge us in 
that delight in disorder of which we are frequently conscious. 
Nonchalant, or apparently so, as to the sombre and tragic 
aspects of life, they let the lambent gleams of their wit and 
humor play upon the surface of things. 

It is usually assumed that even the best of the letter- 
writers of the nineteenth century are inferior to those of 
the eighteenth, that they fall short of the standard set by 
Lady Mary, Walpole, Gray, Cowper, and their contempo- 
raries in the 'golden age of letter- writing.' Inasmuch as we 
are not altogether clear as to the particular desiderata which 
we should demand in a letter, such a judgment as to the re- 
spective products of the two centuries is venturesome. It 
may be conceded that anyone who contends for the superior- 
ity of nineteenth century correspondence may be unduly 
influenced by the interest that he naturally takes in persons 
and events close to his own day; it must be admitted, on 
the other hand, that often no negligible part of the charm 
of the eighteenth century letter is due to a certain appear- 
ance of quaintness in manner resulting merely from the pas- 
sage of time. Gilbert White's letter to Mrs. Chapone on 
Timothy the tortoise is no better than Dickens's account 
of the death of his raven, or than Stevenson's offer to Cosmo 
Monkhouse to trade bodies. The ad\'«.ntage which White's 
'sorrowful reptile' enjoys is due largely to the surprise and 
pleasure we feel in discovering that the Selborne naturalist's 
imagination and humor are still thorough!}^ alive, in spite 
of a formal style, after the lapse of one hundred and thirty- 
five years. 

Without question the changes that took place during the 
nineteenth century in the method of disseminating public 
information wrought in some degree to an enrichment in 
the content of letters. In the older time, the correspondent 
was in duty bound to furnish the kind of news which, at a 
later day, the newspaper conveyed more satisfactority; he 
often loaded his pages with matter which no grace of manner 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

could invest with charm, and he left little room for discuss- 
ing, what now interests us most, himself and his little, im- 
mediate world. 

Often, indeed, the eighteenth century letter-writer was 
quite disinclined to say much either about himself or about 
his immediate world. Until fairly late in the century he 
was likely to be a man untouched by romanticism, unac- 
customed to introspection, and inattentive to Nature. What- 
ever the affectations and excesses to which the Romantic 
Movement led, it made possible, in the happier instances, 
an absorbing self-portraj^al ; and, no less important, it opened 
the eyes of men and women to the beauty of flower and tree, 
of mountain and torrent, of soughing wind and gleaming 
star, to all the incredible pageantry of the ph^^sical world 
which Wordsworth and Coleridge and Shelley and Keats 
knew and interpreted. As the crest of the romantic wave 
passed, the egotism that had at times been portentous 
was relieved by a growth in the power of self-criticism, and 
b}^ an increase in appreciation of the value of perspective. 
Men seemed less inspired but more normal. They acquired 
a taste for looking at things from more than one point of 
view. Still subjective, still observant, they became more 
tolerant and more urbane. In no type of literature is the 
effect of these changes more noteworthy than in the letter; 
in no form of wTiting is there a clearer or happier reflection 
of the state of literary taste and feeling that resulted from 
the rise of romanticism and its subsequent gradual adjust- 
ment to every-day human life. Without wishing to be dog- 
matic, or to underestimate the achievement of a remoter 
past, one is surely warranted in regarding manj^ of the letters 
of the latter part of the nineteenth century as eminently 
felicitous examples of epistolary correspondence. To read 
the letters of Edward FitzGerald, of James Russell Lowell, 
of George Meredith, and of Robert Louis Stevenson is to 
feel the subtle and lasting charm that is induced by blending 
in one genre deftly-depicted personality, a comfortable sense 
of intimacy, and the alert urbanity of cultivated society. 
Whatever the future development of the letter may be — 
a development that the postal card, the telegraph, the tele- 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

phone, and the typewriter will probably affect but slightly — ■ 
it is scarcely conceivable that there should be for generations 
to come a significant and satisfying letter-literature which 
will not owe its salient merits to the heritage bequeathed 
by letter-writers of the nineteenth century. 

Byron J. Rees. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

The editor takes pleasure in recording his obligation to 
the various publishers who have kindly permitted him to 
include in this collection letters of which they control the 
copyright. More particularly would ^e extend his thanks 
to D. Appleton and Company for leave to print four letters 
from Parke Godwin's A Biography of William. Cidlen Bryant, 
and another from Leonard Huxley's Life and Letters of 
Thomas Henry Huxley; to The Century Company for three 
letters from Nicolay and Hay's The Complete Works of 
Abraham Lincoln, and for three letters by Sir Walter Scott 
first printed in 1903 in the July and August numbers of the 
Century Magazine; to Dodd, Mead, and Company for a 
letter from The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley to Elizabeth 
Hitchener; to Duffield and Company for a letter from The 
Letters of Edward Lear, and another from The Later Letters 
of Edward Lear ; to E. P. Button and Company for a letter 
b}" Bishop Brooks from Professor Allen's Life and Letters of 
Phillips Brooks. 

Harper and Brothers have generouslj^ permitted the re- 
printing of twent3^-one letters from The Letters of James Rus- 
sell Lowell, edited bj^ Charles Eliot Norton, together with 
three letters by Macaulay from Trevelyan's Life and Letters 
of Lord Macaulay, a letter by Ruskin, and one by Willis from 
L'Estrange's The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford, a 
letter by George Eliot from J. W. Cross's The Life of George 
Eliot, three letters from The Correspondence of John Lothrop 
Motley, and a letter by Fitz- James O'Brien from The House 
of Harper. 

By special arrangement The Houghton Mifflin Company 
have granted the use of two letters from Frank B. Sanborn's 
Familiar Letters of Henry David Thoreau; three letters b}^ 

xxiii 



2 WILLIAM BLAKE [^t. 42 

owing to the necessary shifting of our luggage from one 
chaise to another; for we had seven different chaises, and 
as many different drivers. We set out between six and 
seven in the morning of Thursday, with sixteen heavy 
boxes and portfolios full of prints. 

And now begins a new life, because another covering 
of earth is shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for 
my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are 
studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of 
old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before 
my mortal life; and those works are the delight and 
study of archangels. Why, then, should I be anxious 
about the riches and fame of mortality? The Lord our 
Father will do for us and with us according to His divine 
will for our good. 

You, O dear Flaxman! are a sublime archangel, — my 
friend and companion from eternity. In the divine 
bosom in our dwelling-place, I look back into the regions 
of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days before this 
earth appeared in its vegetated mortality* to my mortal 
vegetated eyes. I see our houses of eternity, which can 
never be separated, though our mortal vehicles should 
stand at the remotest corners of heaven from each other. 

Farewell, my best Friend! Pamember me and my wife 
in love and friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom 
we ardently desire to entertain beneath our thatched 
roof of rusted gold. And believe me for ever to remain 
your grateful and affectionate 

William Blake. 

* For Blake's use of the word, cf. Jerusalem, p. 77: "Imagination, the 
real and eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint 
shadow, and in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, 
when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more." (A. G. B. Russell.) 



[^t. 53] SAMUEL KOGERS 

1763-1855 

To Sarah Rogers 

[tea with the wordsworths] 

Low-wood Inn: 
Friday morning, 28 Aug., 1816. 
My dear Sarah, — 

I should have written before, but the last post here I 
missed, and there is one here only every other day. I 
travelled to Leicester, where I arrived at 11 at night, 
without an incident, only that in Wells's Row, Islington, 
we took up an old lady blind and deaf, whose only pleas- 
ure seemed to be to shake hands with ua all round very 
often. She spoke, however, of her dinner with great 
pleasure, and expressed a wish that she might have some 
fish, an observation to which we could make no reply. 
Left Leicester next morning at half-past five in an empty 
coach, and at eleven found myself at Moore's. His cot- 
tage is all alone in a pretty little valley with fields and 
woods about it, and is new and neat. They say, however, 
it is leaky and smoky. She struck me as much taller and 
much improved in expression, and, still very handsome, 
tho' a little of her lustre is gone, and she is thinner. But 
she surprised me agreeably, and would be admired any- 
where. The two little girls are not pretty nor otherwise, 
and quiet and merry and caressing beyond anything. I 
wished for you with them very often, and they had made 
arrangements for you. I stayed till Sunday — having 
passed into Dovedale with M. and seen Ham, and then 
went off alone (for, after all, he left me in the lurch) to 
Manchester. Napped there, and at one in the morning 
came on in the mail to Kendal, arriving here on Monday 
at three. On Tuesday, after a row on the lake, I walked 
and drank tea with the Wordsworths, who are all as be- 
fore. They still talk of their day with you on the Thames, 
and Miss W. counts the years since she saw you. Their 
present abode is princely — by the side of Rydal Hall. 
Their windows command Windermere, and their garden 
(Miss H. and the clerk keep it full of flowers) looks down 
upon Rydal water. I was asking my way to them at a 



4 MAKIA EDGEWOETH [.Et. 27 

cottage door in the road, when the child I spoke to ran 
in, and a little girl came smiling out and took my hand 
with a curtsey. It was Miss W., as I guessed, who had 
called to ask after a child in the measles, and she con- 
ducted me to their house. Yesterday I dined there, and 
to-day he spends the day with me. He is very cheerful 
and pleasant, and so are they all. I believe they heard of 
my arrival a few minutes after I came, for they called 
early the next day while I was on the water. The weather 
here has been wretched. Now it is mending a little, but 
still cold and cheerless — the Moores live by a fire, and 
so do the Ws., and I live in my great-coat. I am now 
writing in it. What will become of me, I am at a loss 
to say — but my heart fails me, and I think I shall go on 
no* further. Pray write, my dear Sarah, and tell me your 
plans, to Low-wood — if you write in four or five days, 
but afterwards to Keswick. The regatta here is next 
Wednesday, and W. offers to accompany me to Ulleswater, 
an offer I am glad to accept, so I think I shall not be at 
K. before the end of next week. Pray remember me very 
affectionately to all, and believe me to be, 

Ever yours, 

S. R. 



[^t. 27] MARIA EDGEWORTH 

1767-1849 
To Miss Sophy Ruxton 
[books and experiments] 

Edgeworthstown, July 2, 1794, 
having the honour to be the 
fair day of Edgeworthstown, 
as is well proclaimed to the 
neighbourhood by the noise 
of pigs squeaking, men bawl- 
ing, women brawling, and 
children squealing, etc. 
I will tell you what is going on, that you may see 
whether you like your daily bill of fare. 

There are, an't please you, ma'am, a great many good 
things here. There is a balloon hanging up, and an- 



.^t. 27] MAKIA EDGEWOKTH 5 

other going to be put on the stocks; there is soap made, 
and making from a receipt in Nicholson's. "Chemistry"; 
there is excellent ink made, and to be made by the same 
book; there is a cake of roses just squeezed in a vise, 
by my father, according to the advice of Madame De 
Lagaraye, the woman in the black cloak and ruffles, who 
weighs with unwearied scales, in the frontispiece of a 
book, which perhaps my aunt remembers, entitled 
"Chemie de Gout et de I'Odorat." There are a set of 
accurate weights, just completed by the ingenious Messrs. 
Lovell and Henry Edgeworth, partners : for Henry is now 
a junior partner, and grown an inch and a half upon the 
strength of it in two months. The use and ingenuity of 
these weights I do, or did, understand; it is great, but I 
am afraid of puzzling you and disgracing myself attempt- 
ing to explain it; especially as, my mother says, I once 
sent you a receipt for purifying water with charcoal, 
which she avers to have been above, or below, the com- 
prehension of any rational being. 

My father bought a great many books at Mr. Dean's 
sale. Six volumes of "Machines Approuves," full of 
prints of paper mills, gunpowder mills, machines pour 
remonter les hatteaux, machines pour — a great many 
things which you would like to see, I am sure, over my 
father's shoulder. And my aunt would like to see the 
new staircase, and to see a kitcat* view of a robin red- 
breast sitting on her nest in a sawpit, discovered by 
Lovell; and you would both like to pick Emmeline's fine 
strawberries round the crowded oval table after dinner, 
and to see my mother look so much better in the midst 
of us. 

If these delights thy soul can move. 
Come live with us and be our love. 

* A name given to the small portraits (thirty-six by twenty-eight 
inches) painted by Kneller, of the members of the Kit Cat Club. 



6 MARIA EDGEWORTH [Mt. 56 

[^t. 56] 

To Mrs. Ruxton 

[an evening at sir WALTER SCOTT's] 

Edinburgh, 32 Abercromby Place, 
June 8th, 1823. 
You have had our history up to Kinneil House. Mr. 
and Miss Stewart accompanied us some miles on our road 
to show us the palace of Linlithgow — very interesting to 
see, but not to describe. The drive from Linlithgow to 
Edinburgh is nothing extraordinary, but the road ap- 
proaching the city is grand, and the first view of the 
castle and "mine own romantic town" delighted my com- 
panions; the day was fine and they were sitting outside 
on the barouche seat — a seat which you, my dear aunt, 
would not have envied them with all their fine prospects. 
By this approach to Edinburgh, there are no suburbs; 
you drive at once through magnificent broad streets and 
fine squares. All the houses are of stone, darker than the 
Ardbraccan stone, and of a kind that is little injured by 
weather or time. Margaret Alison had taken lodgings 
for us in Abercromby Place — finely built, with hanging 
shrubbery garden, and the house as delightful as the situ- 
ation. As soon as we had unpacked and arranged our 
things the evening of our arrival, we walked, about ten 
minutes' distance from us, to our dear old friends, the 
Alisons. We found them shawled and bonneted, just 
coming to see us. Mr. Alison and Sir Walter Scott had 
settled that we should dine the first day after our arrival 
with Mr. Alison, which was just what we wished; but on 
our return home we found a note from Sir Walter: 

''Dear Miss Edgeworth, 

I have just received your kind note, just when I had 
persuaded myself it was most likely I should see you in 
person or hear of your arrival. Mr. Alison writes to me 
you are engaged to dine with him to-morrow, which puts 
Roslin out of the question for that day, as it might keep 
you late. On Sunday I hope- you will join our family- 
party at five, and on Monday I have asked one or two of 
the Northern Lights on purpose to meet you. I should 
be engrossing at any time, but we shall be more disposed 



Mt 56] MAEIA EDGEWOKTH 7 

to be so just now, because on the 12th I am under the 
necessity of going to a different kingdom (only the king- 
dom of Fife) for a day or two. To-morrow, if it is quite 
agreeable, I will wait on you about twelve, and hope you 
will permit me to show you some of our improvements. 
I am always, 

Most respectfully yours, 
Walter Scott. 
Edinburgh, Friday. 

Postscript. — Our old family coach is licensed to carry 
six; so take no care on that score. I inclose Mr. Alison's 
note; truly sorry I could not accept the invitation it 
contains. 

Postscript. — My wife insists I shall add that the Laird 
of Staffa promised to look in on us this evening at eight 
or nine, for the purpose of letting us hear one of his 
clansmen sing some Highland boat-songs and the like, 
and that if you will come, as the Irish should to the 
Scotch, without any ceremony, you will hear what is 
perhaps more curious than mellifluous. The man returns 
to the isles to-morrow. There are no strangers with us; 
no party; none but all our own family and two old 
friends. Moreover, all our womankind have been calling 
at Gibbs's hotel, so if you are not really tired and late, 
you have not even pride, the ladies' last defense, to op- 
pose to this request. But, above all, do not fatigue your- 
self and the young ladies. No dressing to be thought of.'' 

Ten o'clock struck as I read the note; we were tired — 
we were not fit to be seen; but I thought it right to ac- 
cept "Walter Scott's" cordial invitation; sent for a hack- 
ney-coach, and just, as we were, without dressing, went. 
As the coach stopped, we saw the hall lighted, and the 
moment the door opened, heard the joyous sounds of loud 
singing. Three servants — "The Miss Edgeworths" sounded 
from hall to landing-place, and as I paused for a moment 
in the anteroom, I heard the first sound of Walter Scott's 
voice — "The Miss Edgeworths come.'' 

The room was lighted by only one globe lamp. A circle 
were singing loud and beating time — all stopped in an 
instant, and Walter Scott in the most cordial and cour- 
teous manner stepped forward to welcome us : "Miss Edge- 
worth, this is so kind of you!" 



8 MAKIA EDGEWOKTH [iEt. 56 

My first impression was, that he was neither so large 
nor so heavy in appearance as I had been led to expect 
by description, prints, bust, and picture. He is more 
lame than I expected, but not unwieldy; his countenance, 
even by the uncertain light in which I first saw it, pleased 
me much; benevolent, and full of genius without the 
slightest effort at expression; delightfully natural, as if 
he did not know he was Walter Scott or the Great Un- 
known of the North, as if he only thought of making 
others happy. After naming to us "Lady Scott, Staffa, 
my daughter Lockhart, Sophia, another daughter Anne, 
my son, my son-in-law Lockhart,'^ just in the broken 
circle as they then stood, and showing me that only his 
family and two friends^ Mr. Clark and Mr. Sharpe, were 
present, he sat down for a minute beside me on a low 
sofa, and on my saying, "Do not let us interrupt what 
was going on," he immediately rose and begged Staffa to 
bid his boatman strike up again. "Will you then join in 
the circle with us?" He put the end of a silk handker- 
chief into my hand, and others into my sisters' ; they held 
by these handkerchiefs all in their circle again, and the 
boatman began to roar out a Gaelic song, to which they 
all stamped in time and repeated the chorus, which, as 
far as I could hear, sounded like "At am Vaun! At am 
Vaun!" frequently repeated with prodigious enthusiasm. 
In another I could make out no intelligible sound but 
"Bar! bar! bar!" But the boatman's dark eyes were 
ready to start out of his head with rapture as he sung and 
stamped, and shook the handkerchief on each side, and 
the circle imitated. 

Lady Scott is so exactly what I had heard her described, 
that it seemed as if we had seen her before. She must 
have been very handsome — French dark large eyes; civil 
and good natured. Supper at a round table, a family 
supper, with attention to us, just sufficient and no more. 
The impression left on my mind this night was, that 
Walter Scott is one of the best-bred men I ever saw, with 
all the exquisite politeness which he knows so well how 
to describe, which is of no particular school or country, 
but which is of all countries, the politeness which arises 
from good and quick sense and feeling, which seems to 
know by instinct the characters of others, to see what will 



^Et. 56] MAKIA EDGEWOETH 9 

please, and put all his guests at their ease. As I sat be- 
side him at supper, I could not believe he was a stranger, 
and forgot he was a great man. Mr. Lockhart is very- 
handsome, quite unlike his picture in Peters's [sic'] let- 
ters. 

When we wakened in the morning, the whole scene of 
the preceding night seemed like a dream; however, at 
twelve came the real Lady Scott, and we called for Scott 
at the Parliament House, who came out of the Courts 
with joyous face as. if he had nothing on earth to do or 
to think of, but to show us Edinburgh. Seeming to enjoy 
it all as much as we could, he carried us to Parliament 
House — Advocate's Library, Castle, and Holyrood House. 
His conversation all the time better than anything we 
could see, full of apropos anecdote, historic, serious or 
comic, just as occasion called for it, and all with a bon- 
homie and an ease that made us forget it was any trouble 
even to his lameness to mount flights of eternal stairs. 
Chantrey's statues of Lord Melville and President Blair 
are admirable. There is another by Poubillac, of Duncan 
Forbes, which is excellent. Scott is enthusiastic about 
the beauties of Edinburgh, and well he may be, the most 
magnificent as well as the most romantic of cities. 

We dined with the dear good Alisons. Mr. Alison met 
me at the drawing-room door, took me in his arms, and 
gave me a hearty hug. I do not think he is much altered, 
only that his locks are silvered over. At this dinner were, 
besides his two sons and two daughters, and Mrs. Alison, 
Mr. and Mrs. Skene. In one of Scott's introductions to 
"Marmion" you will find this Mr. Skene, Mr. Hope, the 
Scotch Solicitor-General (it is curious the Solicitor- 
Generals of Scotland and Ireland should be Hope and 
Joy!), Dr. Brewster, and Lord Meadowbank, and Mrs. 
Maconachie, his wife. Mr. Alison wanted me to sit be- 
side everybody, and I wanted to sit by him, and this I 
accomplished; on the other side was Mr. Hope, whose 
head and character you will find in Peters's letters: he 
was very entertaining. Sophy sat beside Dr. Brewster, 
and had a great deal of conversation with him. 

Next day, Sunday, went to hear Mr. Alison; his fine 
voice but little altered. To me he appears the best 
preacher I have ever heard. Dined at Scott's; only his 



10 JOHN HOOKHAM FEERE [^t. 65 

own family, his friend Skene, his wife and daughter, and 
Sir Henry Stewart; I sat beside Scott; I dare not at- 
tempt at this moment even to think of any of the anec- 
dotes he told, the- fragments of poetry he repeated, or the 
observatioiis on national character he made, lest I should 
be tempted to write some of them for you, and should 
never end this letter, which must be ended some time or 
other. His strong affection for his early friends and his 
country gives a power and a charm to his conversation, 
which cannot be given by the polish of the London world 
and by the habit of literary conversation. 

"Quentin Durward" was lying on the table. Mrs. Skene 
took it up and said, "This is really too barefaced." Scott, 
when pointing to the hospital built by Heriot, said, "That 
was built by one Heriot, you know, the jeweler, in Charles 
the Second's time." 

There was an arch simplicity in his look, at which we; 
could hardly forbear laughing. 



[^t. 65] JOHN HOOKHAM EEERE 

1769-1846 

To Edward Erere 

[building a wall] 

Malta, April 9th, 1835. 
My dear Ned, 

I have to acknowledge the receipt of yours of the 2nd ~ 
March, written with a "real pen, real ink, and real paper." 
What is the nonsense which that puts me in mind of? 
Do you recollect? It was something of poor Bob Olive's 
at Putney and his writing master at home, Mr. Skelton 
by name, whose figure he used to draw on the blank pages 
of his books. . . . It is not the less true that the sight 
of your real ink was a great refreshment to my eyes. So 
much for the form and material characters of your letter. 
For the substance, I am truly glad that your bargain for 
Turton is approaching to a satisfactory termination, the 
more so as I trust it will enable you to inspect us here. 
Do not be afraid of the summer, it is all nonsense. Ask 
William! he will tell you; and I can tell you that I am 
never so well here as in the height of summer, and our 



constitutions, I take it, are not mucli unlike. Take ex- 
ample by the old Welsh mules which are sent over to the 
West Indies, where they are found to grow young again. 
You will see how I am ruining 'myself with building (I 
dare say you will be told so, if you remain in England). 
I built my first piece of wall simply by the Lesbian rule, 
as Aristotle describes it; but I have since made a dis- 
covery of the true Pelasgic method, and am finishing the 
other end of it like a perfect Cyclops, such as Neptune 
employed in building the walls of Troy. I have not time 
to explain this, so you must come and judge for yourself 
on the spot, and stop my hand if you think I am likely 
to do myself any real injury by the expense, for my archi- 
tect is persuading me to build a small Doric temple, 
though the cost, even according to his own statement, will 
not be less than fifteen pounds; and it will cost me, I be- 
lieve, seven or eight to finish my wall in a way that Sir 
W. Gell would approve. 

I have been running on with nonsense (from which 
you will only collect that I am well, and that I shall be 
very glad to see you), while you are looking for some ac- 
count of dear S — . She is the most cheerful creature 
under suffering that ever was, and the delight of every- 
body, including even that old uncle of hers. You know 
"she is living with an old uncle." 



[^t. 45] WILLIAM WOEDSWOETH 

1770-1850 

To Bernard Barton 

[a "perpetual retainer from incapacity"] 

Eydal Mount^ near Ambleside, 
Jan. 12, 1816. 
Dear Sir, 

Though my sister, during my absence, has returned 
thanks in my name for the verses which you have done 
me the honour of addressing to me, and for the obliging 
letter which accompanies them, I feel it incumbent on me, 
on my return home, to write a few words to the same 
purpose, with my own hand. 

It is always a satisfaction to me to learn that I have 



12 ATILLIAM WOEDSWOETH [.Et. 45 

g-iven pleasure upon rational grounds ; and I have nothing 
to object to your poetical panegyric but the occasion which 
called it forth. An admirer of my works, zealous as you 
have declared yourself to be, condescends too much when 

he gives way to an impulse proceeding from the , or 

indeed from any other Eeview. The writers in these pub- 
lications, while they prosecute their inglorious employ- 
ment, cannot be supposed to be in a state of mind very 
favourable for being affected by the finer influences of a 
thing so pure as genuine poetry; and as to the instance 
which has incited you to offer me this tribute of your 
gratitude, though I have not seen it, I doubt not but that 
it is a splenetic effusion of the conductor of that Eeview, 
who has taken a perpetual retainer from his own inca- 
pacity to plead against my claims to public approbation. 
I differ from you in thinking that the only poetical lines 
in your address are "stolen from myself." The best verse, 
perhaps, is the following: 

"Awfully mighty in his impotence," 

which, by way of repayment, I may be tempted to steal 
from you on some future occasion. 

It pleases, though it does not surprise me, to learn that, 
having been affected early in life by my verses, you have 
returned again to your old loves after some little infideli- 
ties, which you were shamed into by commerce with the 
scribbling and chattering part of the world. I have heard 
of many who upon their first acquaintance with my poetry 
have had much to get over before they could thoroughly 
relish it ; but never of one who, having once learned to en- 
joy it, had ceased to value it, or survived his admiration. 
This is as good an external assurance as I can desire, 
that my inspiration is from a pure source, and that my 
principles of composition are trustworthy. 

With many thanks for your good wishes, and begging 
leave to offer mine in return, 

I remain, 
Dear Sir, 

Eespectfully yours, 

Wm. Wordsworth. 
Bernard Barton, Esq., Woodbridge, Suffolk. 



^t. 50] WILLIAM WOEDSWORTH 13 

[^t. 50] 

To Archdeacon Wrangham 

[writing letters; old books] 

[1820?] 

Dear Wrangham, 

You are very good in sending one letter after another 
to inquire after a person so undeserving of attentions of 
this kind as myself. Dr. Johnson, I think, observes, or 
rather is made to observe by some of his biographers, that 
no man delights to give what he is accustomed to sell. 
'Tor example, you, Mr. Thrale, would rather part with 
anything in this way than your porter.'' Now, though 
I have never been much of a salesman in matters of liter- 
ature (the whole of my returns — I do not say net profits, 
but returns — from the writing trade, not amounting to 
seven score pounds), yet, somehow or other, I manufac- 
ture a letter, and part with it as reluctantly as if it were 
really a thing of price. But, to drop the comparison, I 
have so much to do with writing, in the way of labour 
and profession, that it is difficult to me to conceive how 
anybody can take up a pen but from constraint. My 
writing-desk is to me a place of punishment; and, as my 
penmanship sufficiently testifies, I always bend over it 
with some degree of impatience. All this is said that you 
may know the real cause of my silence, and not ascribe 
it in any degree to slight or forgetfulness on my part, 
or an insensibility to your worth and the value of your 
friendship. . . . As to my occupations, they look little 
at the present age; but I live in hope of leaving some- 
thing behind me that by some minds will be valued. 

I see no new books except by the merest accident. Of 
course your poem, which I should have been pleased to 
read, has not found its way to me. You inquire about 
old books: you might almost as well have asked for my 
teeth as for any of mine. The only modern books that I 
read are those of Travels, or such as relate to matters of 
fact; and the only modern books that I care for; but as 
to old ones, I am like yourself — scarcely anything comes 
amiss to me. The little time I have to spare — the very 
little, I may say^all goes that way. If, however, in the 



14 WILLIAM WORDSWOETH [^t. 59 

line of your profession you want any bulky old Commen- 
taries on the Scriptures (such as not twelve strong men 
of these degenerate days will venture — I do not say to 
read, but to lift), 1 can, perhaps, as a special favour, ac- 
commodate you. 

I and mine will be happy, to see you and yours here or 
anywhere; but I am sorry the time you talk of is so dis- 
tant: a year and a half is a long time looking forward, 
though looking back ten times as much is as brief as a 
dream. My writing is wholly illegible — at least I fear so ; 
I had better, therefore, release you. 

Believe me, my dear Wrangham, 

Your affectionate friend, 
W. Wordsworth. 

[^t. 59] 

To Charles Lamb 
[character and plot] 

Jan. 10, 1830. 
My dear Lamh, 

A whole twelvemonth have I been a tetter in your debt, 
for which fault I have been sufficiently punished by self- 
reproach. 

I liked your Play* marvellously, having no objection 
to it but one, which strikes me as applicable to a large 
majority of plays, those of Shakspeare himself not en- 
tirely excepted — I mean a little degradation of character 
for a more dramatic turn of plot. Your present of Hone's 
book was very acceptable; and so much so, that your part 
of the book is the cause why I did not write long ago. I 
wished to enter a little minutely into notice of the dra- 
matic extracts, and, on account of the smallness of the 
print, deferred doing so till longer days would allow me 
to read without candle-light, which I have long since 
given up. But, alas! when the days lengthened, my eye- 
sight departed, and for many months I could not read 
three minutes at a time. You will be sorry to hear that 
this infirmity still hangs about me, and almost cuts me 
off from reading altogether. But how are you, and how 
is your dear sister? I long much, as we all do, to know. 

* The Wife's Trial. 



Mt 60] WILLIAM WOKDSWOKTH 15 

For ourselves, this last year, owing to my sister's dan- 
gerous illness, the effects of which are not yet got over, 
has been an anxious one and melancholy. But no more 
of this. My sister has probably told everything about the 
family; so that I may conclude with less scruple, by as- 
suring you of my sincere and faithful affection for you 
and your dear sister. 

Wm. Wordsworth. 



[^t. 60] 

To Alexander Dyce 
["feeble and fastidious times"] 

[No date, but Postmark, 1830.] 

I am truly obliged, my dear Sir, by your valuable 
present of Webster's Dramatic Works and the ''Speci- 
mens." Your publisher was right in insisting upon the 
whole of Webster, otherwise the book might have been 
superseded, either by an entire edition separately given 
to the world, or in some corpus of the dramatic writers. 
The poetic genius of England, with the exception of 
Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Dryden, Pope, and a very few 
more, is to be sought in her drama. How it grieves one 
that there is so little probability of those valuable authors 
being read except by the curious ! I questioned my friend 
Charles Lamb whether it would answer for some person 
of real taste to undertake abridging the plays that are 
not likely to be read as wholes, and telling such parts of 
the story in brief abstract as were ill managed in the 
drama. He thought it would not.* I, however, am in- 
clined to think it would. . . . 

You must indeed have been fond of that ponderous 
quarto, "The Excursion," to lug it about as you did. In 
the edition of 1827 it was diligently revised, and the 
sense in several instances got into less room; yet still it 
is a long poem for these feeble and fastidious times. You 
would honour me much by accepting a copy of my poeti- 
cal works; but I think it better to defer offering it to 

* Lamb had published his' Specimens of English Dramatic Poets in 
1808. " 



16 WILLIAM WOKDSWOETH [.Et. 72 

you till a new edition is called for, which will be ere 
long, as I understand the present is getting low. 

A word or two about Collins. You know what impor- 
tance I attach to following strictly the last copy of the 
text of an author; and I do not blame you for printing 
in the "Ode to Evening" "brawling" spring; but surely 
the epithet is most unsuitable to the time, the very worst, 
I think, that could have been chosen. 



[J^t. 72] 

To Professor Eeed* 
[death of southey] 

Eydal Mount, March 27, 1843. 
My dear Mr. Reed, — . . . 

You give me pleasure by the interest you take in the 
various passages in which I speak of the poets, my con- 
temporaries, who are no more: dear Southey, one of the 
most eminent, is just added to the list. A few days ago 
I went over to Keswick to attend his remains to their last 
earthly abode. For upwards of three years his mental 
faculties have been in a state of deplorable decay; and 
his powers of recognition, except very rarely and but for 
a moment, have been, during more than half that period, 
all but extinct. His bodily health was grievously im- 
paired, and his medical attendant says that he must have 
died long since but for the very great strength of his 
natural constitution. As to his literary remains, they 
must be very considerable, but, except his epistolary cor- 
respondence, more or less unfinished. His letters cannot 
but be very numerous, and, if carefully collected and ju- 
diciously selected, will, I doubt not, add greatly to his 
reputation. He had a fine talent for that species of com- 
position, and took much delight in throwing off his mind 
in that way. Mr. Taylor, the dramatic author, is his 
literary executor. 

Though I have written at great, and I fear tiresome, 
length, I will add a few words upon the wish you express 
that I would pay a tribute to the English poets of past 

* Henry Reed. Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania. 



.^t. 72] WILLIAM WOKDSWORTH 17 

ages, who never had the fame they are entitled to, and 
have long been almost entirely neglected. Had this been 
suggested to me earlier in life, or had it come into my 
thoughts, the thing in all probability would have been 
done. At present I cannot hope it will ; but it may afford 
you some satisfaction to be told, that in the MS. poem 
upon my poetic education there is a whole book, of about 
600 lines, upon my obligations to writers of imagination, 
and chielly the poets, though I have not expressly named 
those to whom you allude, and for whom, and many others 
of their age, I have a high respect. 

The character of the schoolmaster, about whom you in- 
quire, had, like the "Wanderer," in "The Excursion," a 
solid foundation in fact and reality, but, like him, it was 
also, in some degree, a composition: I will not, and need 
not, call it an invention — it was no such thing; but were 
I to enter into details, I fear it would impair the effect 
of the whole upon your mind ; nor could I do it to my own 
satisfaction. I send you, according to your wish, the ad- 
ditions to the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," and also the last 
poem from my pen. I threw it off two or three weeks ago, 
being in a great measure impelled to it by the desire I felt 
to do justice to the memory of a heroine,* whose conduct 
presented, some time ago, a striking contrast to the in- 
humanity with which our countrymen, shipwrecked lately 
upon the French coast, have been treated. 

Ever most faithfully yours, 
Wm. Wordsworth. 

[^t. 72] 

To Sir Robert Peel 
[the laureateship] 
Rydal Mount^ Ambleside, April' 4, 1843. 
Dear Sir Bohert, 

Having since my first acquaintance with Horace borne 
in mind the charge which he tells us frequently thrilled 
his ear, 

"Solve senescentem mature sanus equum. ne 
Peccet ad extremiini," 

♦ Grace Darling. 



18 WILLIAM WORDSWOKTH [.Et. 74 

I could not but be deterred from incurring responsibilities 
which I might not prove equal to at so late a period of 
life; but as my mind has been entirely set at ease by the 
very kind and most gratifying letter with which you have 
honoured me, and by a second communication from the 
Lord Chamberlain to the same effect, and in a like spirit, 
I have accepted, with unqualified pleasure, a distinction 
sanctioned by her Majesty, and which expresses, upon 
authority entitled to the highest respect, a sense of the 
national importance of poetic literature; and so favour- 
able an opinion of the success with w^hich it has been cul- 
tivated by one who, after this additional mark of your 
esteem, cannot refrain from again assuring you how 
deeply sensible he is of the many and great obligations 
he owes to your goodness, and who has the honour to be. 
Dear Sir Robert, 
Most faithfully, 

Your humble servant, 
William Wordsworth. 

[^t. 74] 

To Professor Reed 
[a birthday fete] 

1844. 
... In your last letter you speak so feelingly of the 
manner in which my birthday (April 7) has been noticed, 
both privately in your country, and somewhat publicly 
in my own neighbourhood, that I cannot forbear adding 
a word or two upon the subject. It would have delighted 
you to see the assemblage in front of our house, some 
dancing upon the gravel platform, old and young, as de- 
scribed in Goldsmith's travels; and others, children, I 
mean, chasing each other upon the little plot of lawn to 
which you descend by steps from the platform. We had 
music of our own preparing ; and two sets of casual itiner- 
ants, Italians and Germans, came in successively, and 
enlivened the festivity. There were present upwards of 
300 children, and about 150 adults of both sexes and all 
ages, the children in their best attire, and of that happy 
and, I may say, beautiful race, which is spread over this 
highly-favoured portion of England. The tables were 



^t. 74] WILLIAM WORDSWOETH 19 

tastefully arranged in the open air — oranges and ginger- 
bread in piles decorated with evergreens and Spring 
flowers; and all partook of tea, the young in the open 
air, and the old within doors. I must own I wish that 
little commemorations of this kind were more common 
among us. It is melancholy to think how little that por- 
tion of the community which is quite at ease in their 
circumstances have to do in a social way with the humbler 
classes. They purchase commodities of them, or they 
employ them as labourers, or they visit them in charity 
for the sake of supplying their most urgent wants by 
almsgiving. But this, alas, is far from enough ; one would 
wish to see the rich mingle with the poor as much as may 
be upon a footing of fraternal equality. The old feudal 
dependencies and relations are almost gone from Eng- 
land, and nothing has yet come adequately to supply their 
place. There are tendencies of the right kind here and 
there, but they are rather accidental than aught that is 
established in general manners. Why should not great 
land-owners look for a substitute for what is lost of feudal 
paternity in the higher principles of christianised hu- 
manity and humble-minded brotherhood ? And why should 
this not extend to those vast communities which crowd 
so many parts of England under one head, in the different 
sorts of manufacture, which, for the want of it, are too 
often the pests of the social state? We are, however, im- 
proving, and I trust that the example set by some mill- 
owners will not fail to influence others. 

It gave me pleasure to be told that Mr. Keble's Dedi- 
cation of his "Praelectiones" had fallen in your way, and 
that you had been struck by it. It is not for me to say 
how far I am entitled to the honour which he has done 
me, but I can sincerely say that it has been the main 
scope of my writings to do what he says I have accom- 
plished. And where could I find a more trustworthy 
judge ? 

What you advise in respect to a separate publication 
of my Church Poetry, I have often turned in my own 
mind; but I have really done so little in that way com- 
pared with the magnitude of the subject, that I have not 
courage to venture on such a publication. Besides, it 
would not, I fear, pay its expenses. The Sonnets were 



WILLIAM WORDSWOETH [.Et. 75 

I 
so published upon the recommendation of a deceased 
nephew of mine, one of the first scholars of Europe, and 
as good as he was learned. The volume did not, I be- 
lieve, clear itself, and a great part of the impression, 
though latterly olfered at a reduced price, still remains, 
I believe, in Mr. Moxon's hands. In this country people 
who do not grudge laying out their money for new publi- 
cations on personal or fugitive interests, that every one 
is talking about, are very unwilling to part with it for 
literature which is unindebted to temporary excitement. 
If they buy such at all, it must be in some form for the 
most part that has little to recommend it but low price. 

And now, my dear Sir, with many thanks for the 
trouble you have been at, and affectionate wishes for your 
welfare, 

Believe me faithfully yours, 
Wm. Wordsworth. 

[^t. T5] 

To Professor Reed 
[presentation to the queen] 

Rydal Mount^ Ambleside, July 1, 1845. 
My dear Mr. Reed, 

I have, as usual, been long in your debt, which I am 
pretty sure you will excuse as heretofore. It gave me 
much pleasure to have a glimpse of your brother under 
circumstances which no doubt he will have described to 
you. He spoke of his health as improved, and I hope it 
will continue to do so. I understood from him that it 
was probable that he should call at Rydal before his re- 
turn to his own country. I need not say to you I shall 
be glad, truly glad, to see him both for his own sake, and 
as so nearly connected with you. My absence from home 
lately was not of more than three weeks. I took the jour- 
ney to London solely to pay my respects to the Queen 
upon my appointment to the Laureateship upon the de- 
cease of my friend Mr. Southey. The weather was very 
cold, and I caught an inflammation in one of my eyes, 
which rendered my stay in the south very uncomfortable. 
I nevertheless did, in respect to the object of my journey, 
all that was required. The reception given me by the 



^t. 75] WILLIAM WOEDSWOKTH 21 

Queen at her ball was most gracious. Mrs. Everett, the 
wife of your minister, among many others, was a witness 
to it, without knowing who I was. It moved her to the 
shedding of tears. This effect was in part produced, I 
suppose, by American habits of feeling, as pertaining to 
a republican government. To see a grey-haired man of 
seventy-live years of age, kneeling down in a large as- 
sembly to kiss the hand of a young woman, is a sight for 
which institutions essentially democratic do not prepare 
a spectator of either sex, and must naturally place the 
opinions upon which a republic is founded, and the sen- 
timents which support it, in strong contrast with a 
government based and upheld as ours is. I am not, 
therefore, surprised that Mrs. Everett was moved, as she 
herself described to persons of my acquaintance, among 
others to Mr. Eogers the poet. By the by, of this gentle- 
man, now I believe in his eighty-third year, I saw more 
than of any other person except my host, while I was in 
London. He is singularly fresh and strong for his years, 
and his mental faculties (with the exception of his mem- 
ory a little) not at all impaired. It is remarkable that 
he and the Rev. W. Bowles were both distinguished as 
poets when I was a school-boy, and they have survived 
almost all their eminent contemporaries, several of whom 
came into notice long after them. Since they became 
known, Burns, Cowper, Mason, the author of "Caractacus" 
and friend of Gray, have died. Thomas Warton, Laure- 
ate, then Byron, Shelley, Keats, and a good deal later 
Scott, Coleridge, Crabbe, Southey, Lamb, the Ettrick 
Shepherd, Gary the translator of Dante, Growe the author 
of "Lewesdon Hill," and others of more or less distinc- 
tion, have disappeared. And now of English poets, ad- 
vanced in life, I cannot recall any but James Montgomery, 
Thomas Moore, and myself, who are living, except the 
octogenarian with whom I began. 

I saw Tennyson, when I was in London, several times. 
He is decidedly the first of our living poets, and I hope 
will live to give the world still better things. You will 
be pleased to hear that he expressed in the strongest terms 
his gratitude to my writings. To this I was far from in- 
different, though persuaded that he is not much in sym- 
pathy with what I should myself most value in my 



22 WILLIAM WOKDSWOKTH [.^.t. 75 

attempts, viz., the spirituality with which I have endeav- 
oured to invest the ^naterial universe, and the moral re- 
lations under which I have wished to exhibit its most 
ordinary appearances. I ought not to conclude this first 
portion of my letter without telling you that I have now 
under my roof a cousin, who some time ago was intro- 
duced, improperly, I think, she being then a child, to 
the notice of the public, as one of the English poetesses, 
in an article of the Quarterly so entitled. Her name is 
Emmeline Fisher, and her mother is my first cousin. 
What advances she may have made in latter years I do 
not know, but her productions from the age of eight to 
twelve were not less than astonishing. She only arrived 
yesterday, and we promise ourselves much pleasure in 
seeing more of her. Our dear friend Miss Fenwick is 
also under our roof; so is Katherine Southey, her late 
father's youngest daughter, so that we reckon ourselves 
rich; though our only daughter is far from us, being 
gone to Oporto with her husband on account of her en- 
feebled frame: and most unfortunately, soon after her 
arrival, she w^as seized with a violent attack of rheumatic 
fever caused by exposure to the evening air. We have 
also been obliged lately to part with four grandsons, very 
fine boys, who are gone with their father to Italy to visit 
their mother, kept there by severe illness, which sent her 
abroad two years ago. Under these circumstances we old 
people keep our spirits as well as we can, trusting the end 
to God's goodness. 

Now, for the enclosed poem, which I wrote the other 
day, and which I send to you, hoping it may give you 
some pleasure, as a scanty repayment for all that we owe 
you. Our dear friend. Miss Fenwick, is especially de- 
sirous that her warmest thanks should be returned to 
you for all the trouble you have taken about her bonds. 
But, to return to the verses : if you approve, pray forward 
them with my compliments and thanks for his letter to 
. In his letter he states that with others he is strenu- 
ously exerting himself in endeavours to abolish slavery, 
and, as one of the means of disposing the public mind 
to that measure, he is about to publish selections from 
various authors in behalf of humanity. He begs an origi- 
nal composition from me. I have nothing bearing di- 



^t. 48] SYDNEY SMITH 23 

rectly upon slavery, but if you think this little piece 
would serve his cause indirectly, pray be so kind as to 
forward it to him. He speaks of himself as deeply in- 
debted to my writings. 

I have not left room to subscribe myself more than 

Affectionately yours, 

William Wordsworth. 



[^t. 48] SYDNEY SMITH 

1771-1845 

To HIS Sox 

[history and poetry] 

FosTON Eectory^ 1819. 
My dear Douglas, 

Concerning this Mr. , I would not have you put 

any trust in him, for he is not trustworthy; but so live 
with him as if one day or other he were to be your enemy. 
With such a character as his, this is a necessary pre- 
caution. 

In the time you can give to English reading you should 
consider what it is most needful to have, what it is most 
shameful to want, — shirts and stockings before frills and 
collars. Such is the history of your own country, to be 
studied in Hume, then in Eapin's History of England, 
with Tindal's Continuation. Hume takes you to the end 
of James the Second, Rapin and Tindal will carry you 
to the end of Anne. Then, Coxe's "Life of Sir Robert 
Walpole," and the "Duke of Marlborough"; and these 
read with attention to dates and geography. Then, the 
history of the other three or four enlightened nations in 
Europe. For the English poets, I will let you off at 
present with Milton, Dryden, Pope, and Shakspeare; 
and remember, always in books keep the best company. 
Don't read a line of Ovid, till you have mastered Virgil; 
nor a line of Thomson, till you have exhausted Pope; 
nor of Massinger, till you are familiar with Shakspeare. 

I am glad you liked your box and its contents. Think 
of us as we think of you ; and send us the most acceptable 
of all presents, — the information that you are improving 
in all particulars. 



24 SYDNEY SMITH [.Et. 64 

The greatest of all human mysteries are the West- 
minster holidays. If you can get a peep behind the cur- 
tain, pray let us know immediately the day of your com- 
ing home. 

We have had about three or four ounces of rain here; 
that is all. I heard of your being wet through in London, 
and envied you very much. The whole of this parish is 
pulverised from long and excessive drought. Our whole 
property depends upon the tranquillity of the winds: if it 
blow before it rains, we shall all be up in the air in the 
shape of dust, and we shall be transparished we know not 
where. God bless you, my dear boy! I hope we shall 
soon meet at Lydiard. 

Your affectionate father, 
Sydney Smith. 

[.^t. 59] 

To Lady Holland 
[excessive anxiety] 

May, 1831. 
... I met John Russell at Exeter. The people along 
the road were very much disappointed by his smallness. 
I told them he was much larger before the Bill was thrown 
out, but was reduced by excessive anxiety about the peo- 
ple. This brought tears into their eyes! 

S. S. 



[^t. 64] 

To Miss 



[on tearing frocks] 

London, July 22nd, 1835. 

Lucy, Lucy, my dear child, don't tear your frock: tear- 
ing frocks is not of itself a proof of genius; but write as 
your mother writeSj act as your mother acts; be frank, 
loyal, affectionate, simple, honest; and then integrity or 
laceration of frock is of little import. 

And Lucy, dear child, mind your arithmetic. You 
know, in the first sum of yours I ever saw, there was a 
mistake. You had carried two (as a cab is licensed to do) 



^t. 64] SYDNEY SMITH 25 

and you ought, dear Lucy, to have carried but one. Is 
this a trifle? What would life be without arithmetic, but 
a scene of horrors? 

You are going to Boulogne, the city of debts, peopled 
by men who never understood arithmetic; by the time 
you return, I shall probably have received my first para- 
lytic stroke, and shall have lost all recollection of you; 
therefore I now give you my parting advice. Don't marry 
anybody who has not a tolerable understanding and a 
thousand a year; and God bless you, dear child! 

Sydney Smith. 

[iEt. 64] 

To Mrs. Holland 
[a channel-crossing] 

KouEN, Oct. 6, 1835. 
My dearest Child, — 

fell ill in London, and detained us a day or two. 

At Canterbury, the wheel would not turn round; we slept 
there, and lost our passage the next day at Dover: this 
was Wednesday, — a day of mist, fog, and despair. It 
blew a hurricane all that night, and we were kept awake 
by thinking of the different fish by which we should be 
devoured on the following day. I thought I should fall 
to the lot of some female porpoise, who, mistaking me 
for a porpoise, but finding me only a parson, would make 
a dinner of me. We were all up and at the quay by five 
in the morning. The captain hesitated very much whether 
he would embark, and you<r mother solicited me in pencil 
notes not to do so; however, we embarked, — the French 
Ambassador, ourselves, twenty Calais shopkeepers, and a 
variety of all nations. The passage was tremendous: 
Hibbert had crossed four times, and the courier twenty; 
I had crossed three times more, and we none of us ever 
remember such a passage. I lay along the deck, wrapped 
in a cloak, shut my eyes, and, as to danger, reflected that 
it was much more apparent than real; and that, as I had 
so little life to lose, it was of little consequence whether 
I was drowned, or died, like a resident clergymen, from 
indigestion. Your mother was taken out more dead than 
alive. 



26 SYDNEY SMITH [.Et. 64 

We were delighted with the hotel of Dessein, at Calais; 
eggs, butter, bread, coli'ee — everything better than in Eng- 
land — the hotel itself magnificent. We all recovered, and 
stayed there the day; and proceeded to sleep at Montreuil, 
forty miles, where we were still more improved by a good 
dinner. The next day, twenty miles farther, to Abbeville; 
from thence, sixty miles the next day to this place, where 
we found a superb hotel, and are quite delighted with 
Rouen; the churches far exceed anything in England in 
richness of architectural ornament. The old buildings of 
Rouen are most interesting. All that I refuse to see is, 
where particular things were done to particular persons; 
— the square where Joan of Arc was burnt, — the house 
where Corneille was born. The events I admit to be im- 
portant; but, from long experience, I have found that 
the square where Joan of Arc was burnt, and the room 
where Corneille was born, have such a wonderful resem- 
blance to other rooms and squares, that I have ceased to 
interest myself about them. 

To-morrow we start for Mantes, and the next day we 
shall be at Paris. Travelling is extremely slow — five miles 
an hour. I find the people now as I did before, most de- 
lightful; compared to themx we are perfect barbarians. 
Happy the man whose daughter were half as well-bred 
as the chambermaid at Dessein's, or whose sons were as 
polished as the waiter! Whatever else you do, insist, 
when Holland brings you to France, on coming to Rouen; 
there is nothing in France more worth seeing. Come to 
Havre, and by steam to Rouen. God bless you, dear 
child! Give my love to Froggy and Doggy. Your af- 
fectionate father, 

Sydney Smith. 

[^t. 64] 

To Mrs. Holland 
[the mayor of Bristol] 

December 11, 1835. 
My dearest Child, — 

Few are the adventures of a canon travelling gently 
over good roads to his benefice. In my way to Reading 
I had, for my companion, the Mayor of Bristol when I 



^t. 65] SYDNEY SMITH 27 

preached that sermon in favour of the Catholics. He 
recognized me, and we did very well together. I was 
terribly afraid that he would stop at the same inn, and 
that I should have the delight of his society for the even- 
ing; but he (thank God!) stopped at the Crown, as a 
loyal man, and I, as a rude one, went on to the Bear. 
Civil waiters, wax candles, and off again the next morn- 
ing, with my friend and Sir W. W , a very shrewd, 

clever, coarse, entertaining man, with whom I skirmished 
a Vaimahle all the way to Bath. At Bath, candles still 
more waxen, and waiters still more profound. Being, 
since my travels, very much Gallicised in my character, 
I ordered a pint of claret; I found it incomparably the 
best wine I ever tasted; it disappeared with a rapidity 
which surprises me even at this distance of time. The 
next morning, in the coach by eight, with a handsome 
valetudinarian lady, upon whom the coach produced the 
same effect as a steam-packet would do. I proposed weak 
warm brandy and water; she thought, at first, it would 
produce inflammation of the stomach, but presently re- 
quested to have it warm and not weak, and she took it 
to the last drop, as I did the claret. All well here. God 
bless yoQ, dearest child! Love to Holland. 

Sydney Smith. 

[^t. 65] 

To Colonel Fox 
[a problem in latches] 

October, 1836. 
My dear Charles, — 

If you have ever paid any attention to the habits of 
animals, you will know that donkeys are remarkably 
cunning in opening gates. The way to stop them is to 
have two latches instead of one: a human being has two 
hands, and lifts up both latches at once: a donkey has 
only one nose, and latch A drops as he quits it to lift up 
latch B. Bobus and I had the grand luck to see little 
Aunty engaged intensely with this problem. She was 
taking a walk, and was arrested by a gate with this for- 
midable difficulty: the donkeys were looking on to await 
the issue. Aunty lifted up the first latch with the most 



28 SYDNEY SMITH [xEt. 68 

perfect success, but found herself opposed by a second; 
flushed with victory, she quitted the first latch and rushed 
at the second: her success was equal, till in the mean- 
time the first dropped. She tried this two or three times, 
and, to her utter astonishment, with the same results ; the 
donkeys brayed, and Aunty was walking away in great 
dejection, till Bobus and I recalled her with loud laugh- 
ter, showed her that she had two hands, and roused her 
to vindicate her superiority over the donkeys. I mention 
this to you to request that you will make no allusion to 
this animal, as she is remarkably touchy on the subject, 
and also that you will not mention it to Lady Mary. I 
wish you would both come here next year. Always yours, 
my dear Charles, very sincerely, 

Sydney Smith. 

[^t. 68] 

To Charles Dickens 
[an invitation to dine] 

Charles Street, Berkeley Square, 
June 11, 1839. 
My dear Sir, 

Nobody more, and more justly, talked of than yourself. 
The Miss Berrys, now at Eichmond, live only to be- 
come acquainted with you, and have commissioned me 
to request you to dine with them Friday, the 29th, or 
Monday, July 1st, to meet a canon of St. Paul's, the rec- 
tor of Combe Florey, and the vicar of Halberton,* — all 
equally well known to you; to say nothing of other and 
better people. The Miss Berrys and Lady Charlotte Lind- 
say have not the smallest objection to be put into a 
number,t but, on the contrary, would be proud of the dis- 
tinction; and Lady Charlotte, in particular, you may 
marry to Newman Noggs. Pray come; it is as much as 
my place is worth to send them a refusal. 

Sydney Smith. 

* Sydney Smith was all three. 

t Of Nicholas Nickleby, then publishing. 



^t. 71] SYDNEY SMITH 29 

[^t. 71] 

To John Murray 
[moribundity and caducity] 

Combe Florey, Sept. 12, 1842. 
My dear Murray, 

How did the Queen receive you? What was the gen- 
eral effect of her visit ? Was it well managed ? Does she 
show any turn for metaphysics? Have you had much 
company in the Highlands? 

Mrs. Sydney and I are both in fair health, — such health 
as is conceded to moribundity and caducity. 

Horner applied to me, and I sent him a long letter upon 
the subject of his brother, which he likes, and means to 
publish in his Memoirs. He seeks the same contribution 
from Jeffrey. Pray say to Jeft'rey that he ought to send 
it. It is a great pity that the subject has been so long 
deferred. The mischief has all proceeded from the delays 
of poor Whishaw, who cared too much about reputation, 
to do anything in a period compatible with the shortness 
of human life. If you have seen Jeffrey, tell me how he 
is, and if you think he will stand his work. 

We have the railroad now within five miles. Bath in 
two hours, London in six, — in short, everywhere in no 
time! Every fresh accident on the railroads is an ad- 
vantage, and leads to an improvement. What we want 
is, an overturn which would kill a bishop, or, at least, a 
dean. This mode of conveyance would then become per- 
fect. We have had but little company here this summer. 
Luttrell comes next week. I have given notice to the 
fishmongers, and poulterers, and fruit women! Ever, 
dear Murray, your sincere friend, 

Sydney Smith. 



30 SYDNEY SMITH [Mi. 71 

[^t. 71] 

To Lady Holland 
[JOHN Allen's legs] 

Combe Florey, Sept. 13, 1842. 
My dear Lady Holland, 

I am sorry to hear Allen* is not well; but the reduc- 
tion of his legs is a pure and unmixed good; they are 
enormous, — they are clerical! He has the creed of a 
philosopher and the legs of a clergyman; I never saw such 
legs, — at least, belonging to a layman. 

Kead "A Life in the Forest," f skipping nimbly ; but 
there is much of good in it. 

It is a bore, I admit, to be past seventy, for you are 
left for execution, and are daily expecting the death- 
warrant; but, as you say, it is not anything very capital 
we quit. We are, at the close of life, only hurried away 
from stomach-aches, pains in the joints, from sleepless 
nights and unamusing days, from weakness, ugliness, and 
nervous tremors; but we shall all meet again in another 

planet, cured of all our defects, will be less irritable; 

more silent ; will assent ; Jeffrey will speak 

lower; Bobus will be just as he is; I shall be more re- 
spectful to the upper clergy; but I shall have as lively a 
sense as I now have of all your kindness and affection 
for me. 

Sydney Smith. 



[^t. 71] 



To Mrs. 

[a beautiful monument] 

Combe Florey, Oct. 13, 1842. 

My dear Mrs. , 

You lie heavy upon my conscience, unaccustomed to 
bear any weight at all. What can a country parson say 
to a travelled and travelling lady, who neither knows nor 
cares anything for wheat, oats, and barley? It is this 

* Physician and librarian at Holland House. 
t By S. M. Cooper. Philadelphia, 1854. 



^t. 71] SYDNEY SMITH 31 

reflection which keeps me silent. Still she has a fine 
heart, and likes to be cared for, even by me. 

Mrs. Sydney and I are in tolerable health, — both better 
than we were when you lived in England; but there is 
much more of us, so that you will find you were only half 
acquainted with us! I wish I could add that the intel- 
lectual faculties had expanded in proportion to the aug- 
mentation of flesh and blood. 

Have you any chance of coming home? or rather, I 
should say, have we any chance of seeing you at home? 
I have been living for three months quite alone here. I 
am nearly seventy-two, and I confess myself afraid of 
the very disagreeable methods by which we leave this 
world; the long death of palsy, or the degraded spectacle 
of aged idiotism. As for the pleasures of the world, — it 
is a very ordinary, middling sort of place. Pray be my 
tombstone, and say a good word for me when I am dead! 
I shall think of my beautiful monument when I am go- 
ing; but I wish I could see it before I die. God bless you I 

Sydney Smith. 

E^t. 71] 

To Lady Holland 
[a martinet] 

November 6th, 1842. 
My dear Lady Holland, 

I have not the heart, when an amiable lady says, "Ccnne 
to 'Semiramis' in my box," to decline; but I got bolder 
at a distance. "Semiramis" would be to me pure misery. 
I love music very little, — I hate acting; I have the worst 
opinion of Semiramis herself, and the whole thing (I can- 
not help it) seems so childish and so foolish that I cannot 
abide it. Moreover, it would be rather out of etiquette 
for a canon of St. Paul's to go to an opera; and where 
etiquette prevents me from doing things disagreeable to 
myself, I am a perfect martinet. 

All these things considered, I am sure you will not be 
a Semiramis to me, but let me off. 

Sydney Smith. 



32 SYDNEY SMITH [^t. 72 

[Mt. 71] 

To Miss Berry 
[tittenhanger] 

November, 1842. 
Where is Tittenhanger? 
Is it near Bangor? 
Is it in Scotland, 
Or a more flat land? 
Is it in Wales, 
Or near Versailles? 
Tell me, in the name of grace, 
Why you go to such a place? 
I do not know in what map to look. 
And I can't find it in the Koad-book. 
I always feel so sad and undone, 
When you and Agnes go from London. 
Your loving friend and plump divine 
Accepts your kind commands to dine. 
I will be certain to remember 
The fifteenth day of this November. 
There is a young prince 
Two days since — 
But for fear I should be a bore, 
I won't write you any more; 
Indeed, I've nothing else to tell. 
But that Monckton Milnes is well. 

Sydney Smith. 

[^t. 72] 

To Mrs. Grote 
[the happy surgeons] 

Combe Florey, July 17, 1843. 
I have been sadly tormented with the gout in my knee. 
I had made great progress; but at the Archbishop's I 
walked too much, and the gout came back. 

My place looks very beautiful, and I really enjoy the 
change. We were very sorry not to see you the evening 
you were to come to us; but the temptation not to come, 
where you have engaged to come, is more than you can 



^t. 72] SYDNEY SMITH 33 

resist: try refusing, and see what that will do! Mr. 
Grote was very agreeable and sensible, as he always is. 
I met Brunei at the Archbishop's, and found him a very 
lively and intelligent man. He said that when he coughed 
up the piece of gold, the two surgeons, the apothecary, 
and physicians all joined hands, and danced around the 
room for ten minutes, without taking the least notice of 
his convulsed and half-strangled state. I admire this 
very much. Your sincere friend, 

Sydney Smith. 

[^t. 72] 

To Lord Murray 
> [a mass of nourishment] 

Combe Florey, Sept. 29, 1843. 
My dear Murray, 

Jeffrey has written to me to say he means to dedicate 
his Essays to me. This I think a very great honour, and 
it pleases me very much. I am sure he ought to resign. 
He has very feeble health; a mild climate would suit the 
state of his throat. Mrs. Jeffrey thinks he could not em- 
ploy himself. Wives know a great deal about husbands; 
but, if she is right, I should be surprised. I have thought 
he had a canine appetite for books, though this sometimes 
declines in the decline of life. I am beautifying my 
house in Green Street; a comfortable house is a great 
source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health 
and a good conscience. I see your religious war is be- 
gun in Scotland. I suppose Jeffrey will be at the head 
of the Free Church troops. Do you think he has any 
military talents? 

You are, I hear, attending more to diet than hereto- 
fore. If you wish for anything like happiness in the 
fifth act of life, eat and drink about one-half what you 
could eat and drink. Did I ever tell you my calculation 
about eating and drinking? Having ascertained the 
weight of what I could live upon, so as to preserve health 
and strength, and what I did live upon, I found that, be- 
tween ten and seventy years of age, I had eaten and drunk 
forty four-horse waggon-loads of meat and drink more 
than would have preserved me in life and health! The 



34 SYDNEY SMITH [.Et. 72 

value of this mass of nourishment I considered to be worth 
seven thousand pounds sterling. It occurred to me that 
I must, by my voracity, have starved to death fully a 
hundred persons. This is a frightful calculation, but ir- 
resistibly true; and I think, dear Murray, your waggons 
would require an additional horse each! 

Lord and Lady Lansdowne, who are ramblin-g about 
this fine country, are to spend a day here next week. You 
must really come to see the West of England. Erom 
Combe Elorey we will go together to Linton and Lyn- 
mouth, than which there is nothing finer in this island. 
Two of our acquaintance dead this week, — Stewart 
Mackenzie and Belli We must close our ranks. God 
bless you, my dear Murray! 

Sydney Smith. 

[^t. 72] 

To Mrs. Meynell 
[arcadian old gentlemen] 

Combe Elorey^ 1843. 
My dear Mrs. Meynell, 

Let me, if you please, have a word or two from you, to 
tell me of your new habitation. Saba seems to have been 

delighted with her visit. I see has been with you. 

How did you like her? To me she is agreeable, civil, 
and elegant, and by no means insipid. She has a kind 
of ready-money smile, and a three-per-cent. affability, 
which make her interesting. 

We have been leading a very solitary life here. Hardly 
a soul has been here, but I am contented, as I value more 
every day the pleasures of indolence; and there is this 
difference between a large inn like Temple ISTewsam and 
a small public-house like Combe Elorey, that you hold 
a numerous society, who make themselves to a certain 
degree independent of you, and do not weigh upon you; 
whereas, as I hold only two or three, the social weight is 
upon me. Luttrell is staying here. Nothing can exceed 
the innocence of our conversation. It is one continued 
eulogy upon man-and-woman-kind. You would suppose 
that two Arcadian old gentlemen, after shearing their 
flocks, had agreed to spend a week together upon curds 



^t. 41] SIR WALTER SCOTT 35 

and c-ream, and to indulge in gentleness of speach and soft- 
ness of mind. 

We have had a superb summer, but I am glad it is over ; 
I am never happy till the fires are lighted. Where is your 
house in London? You cannot but buy one: it is abso- 
lutely impossible for Temple Newsam not to have a Lon- 
don establishment. God bless you, dear G. I Keep a little 
love for your old friend, 

Sydney Smith. 

To His Grandchild [Undated] 

[on sending him a letter overweight] 
Oh, you little wretch! Your letter cost me fourpence. 
I will pull all the plums out of your puddings; I will 
undress your dolls and steal their under-petticoats ; you 
shall have no currant-jelly to your rice; I will kiss you 
till you cannot see o-ut of your eyes; when nobody else 
whips you, I will do so; I will fill you so full of sugar- 
plums that they shall run out of your nose and ears; 
lastly, your frocks shall be so short that they shall not 
come below your knees. Your loving grandfather, 

Sydney Smith. 



[^t.41] SIR WALTER SCOTT 

1771-1832 
To Henry Brevoort 

[the KNICKERBOCKER HISTORt] 

Abbotsford, 23d April, 1813. 
My dear Sir, 

I beg you to accept my best thanks for the uncommon 
degree of entertainment which I have received from the 
most excellently jocose history of New York. I am sensi- 
ble, that as a stranger to American parties and politics, 
I must lose much of the concealed satire of the piece, but 
I must own that looking at the simple and obvious mean- 
ing only, I have never read anything so closely resembling 
the style of Dean Swift, as the annals of Diedrich Knick- 
erbocker. I have been employed these few evenings in 
reading them aloud to Mrs. S. and two ladies who are our 



36 SIK WALTEK SCOTT [^t. 49 

guests, and our sides have been absolutely sore with 
laughing. I think, too, there are passages which indicate 
that the author possesses powers of a different kind, and 
has some touches which remind me much of Sterne. I 
beg you will have the kindness to let me know when Mr. 
Irvine * takes pen in hand again, for assuredly I shall 
expect a very great treat which I may chance never to 
hear of but through your kindness. 

Believe me, Dear Sir, 
Your obliged humble servant, 

Walter Scott. 



[Mi Ad] 

To Mrs. Hughes 
[the waverley novels] 

Waterloo Hotel, Tuesday, 

March 7, 1821. 
My dear Mrs. Hughes, — 

I have been so completely harassed by business and en- 
gagements since I came to this wilderness of houses, that 
I must have seemed very ungrateful in leaving your kind 
remembrances unacknowledged. You mistake when you 
give me any credit for being concerned with these far- 
famed novels, but I am not the less amused with the 
hasty dexterity of the good folks of Cumnor and its vicin- 
ity getting all their traditionary lore into such order as 
to meet the taste of the public. I could have wished the 
author had chosen a more heroical death for his fair 
victim.f 

It is some time since I received and acknowledged your 
young student's very spirited verses. I am truly glad 
that Oxford breeds such nightingales, and that you have 
an interest in them. I sent my letter to my friend Long- 
man, and, as it did not reach you, can only repeat my 
kindest and best thanks. I would be most happy to know 
your son, and hope you will contrive to aiford me that 
pleasure. 

With best compliments to Dr. Hughes, and sincere re- 

• Irving. t Amy Robsart, in Kenilworth. 



^t. 51] SIK WALTEK SCOTT 37 

gret that I have so often found Amen Comer untenanted, 
I am, with sincerity, 

Dear Mrs. Hughes, 
Your much obliged humble servant, 
Walter Scott. 

[^t. 51] 

To Thomas Frognall Dibdin 
[the unknown author] 

Edin., Feb. 25, 1823. 
My dear Sir, 

I was duly favoured with your letter, which proves one 
point against the ^^nknown Author of Waverley; namely 
that he is certainly a Scotsman, since no other nation 
pretends to the advantage of second sight. Be he who 
or where he may, he must certainly feel the very high 
honour which has selected him, nominis umhra, to a situ- 
ation so worthy of envy. 

As his personal appearance in the fraternity is not like 
to be a speedy event, one may presume he may be desirous 
of offering some token of his gratitude in the shape of a 
reprint, or such-like kickshaw, and for this purpose you 
had better send me the statutes of your learned body, which 
I will engage to send him in safety. 

It will follow as a characteristic circumstance, that the 
table of the Koxburghe, like that of King Arthur, will 
have a vacant chair, like that of Banquo at Macbeth's 
banquet. But if this author, who "hath fernseed and 
walketh invisible," should not appear to claim it before 
I come to London (should I ever be there again), with 
permission of the Club, I, who have something of adven- 
ture in me, although a knight like Sir Andrew Ague- 
cheek, "dubb'd with unhacked rapier, and on carpet con- 
sideration," would, rather than lose the chance of a dinner 
with the Eoxburghe Club, take upon me the adventure 
of the siege perilous, and reap some amends for perils 
and scandals into which the invisible champion has drawn 
me, by being his locum tenens on so distinguished an 
occasion. • 

It will not be uninteresting to you to know, that a fra- 
ternity is about to be established here something on the 



38 SIR WALTER SCOTT [^t. 54 

plan of the Roxburghe Club; but, having Scottish antiq- 
uities chiefly in view, it is to be called the Bannatyne 
Club, from the celebrated antiquary, George Bannatyne, 
who compiled by far the greatest record of old Scottish 
poetry. The first meeting is to be held on Thursday, 
when the health of the Roxburghe Club will be drunk. — I 
am always, my dear sir, your most faithful humble servant, 

Walter Scott. 

[^t. 54] 

To Dr. and Mrs. Hughes 
[the financial disaster] 

Edinburgh, 6 Eebniary, 1826. 
My dear Mrs. Hughes and my worthy Doctor, — 

I write immediately to give you the information which 
your kindness thinks of importance. I shall certainly lose 
a very large sum by the failure of my booksellers, whom 
all men considered as worth £150,000 & who I fear will 
not cut up, as they say, for one fourth of the money. 
But looking at the thing at the worst point of view, I 
cannot see that I am entitled to claim the commiseration 
of any one, since I have made an arrangement for settling 
these affairs to the satisfaction of every party concerned 
so far as yet appears, which leaves an income with me 
ample for all the comforts and many of the elegancies of 
life, and does not in the slightest degree innovate on any 
of my comforts. So what title have I to complain? I 
am far richer in point of income than Generals and Ad- 
mirals who have led fleets and armies to battle. My family 
are all provided for in present or in prospect, my estate 
remains in my family, my house and books in my own 
possession. I shall give up my house in Edinb. and retire 
to Abbotsford; where my wife and Anne will make their 
chief residence; during the time our courts sit, when I 
must attend, I will live at my club. If Anne wishes to 
see a little of the world in the gay season, they can have 
lodgings for two or three weeks; this plan we had indeed 
form'd before it became imperative. 

At Abbotsford we will cut off all hospitality, which 
latterly consumed all my time, which was worse than the 
expense; this I intended to do at any rate; we part with 



^t. 58] SIE WALTER SCOTT 39 

an extra servant or two, manage our household economi- 
cally, and in five years, were the public to stand my 
friend, I should receive much more than I have lost. 
But if I only pay all demands I shall be satisfied. 

I shall be anxious to dispose of Mr. Charles so soon as 
his second year of Oxford is ended. I think of trying 
to get him into some diplomatic line, for which his habits 
and manners seem to suit him well. 

I might certainly have borrowed large sums. But to 
what good purpose ? I must have owed that money, and a 
sense of obligation besides. Now, as I stand, the Banks 
are extremely sensible that I have been the means of great 
advantages to their establishments, and have afforded me 
all the facilities I can desire to make my payments; and 
as they gained by my prosperity, they are handsomely 
disposed to be indulgent to my adversity, and what can 
an honest man wish for more* 

Many people will think that because I see company 
easily my pleasures depend on society. But this is not 
the case; I am by nature a very lonely animal, and enjoy 
myself much at getting rid from a variety of things 
connected with public business, etc., which I did because 
they were fixed on me, but I am particularly happy to be 
rid of. And now let the matter be at rest for ever. It 
is a bad business, but might have been much worse. 
I am, my dear friends. 

Most truly yours, 

Walter Scott. 
[^t.58?] 

To Mrs. Hughes 
[tom purdie] 

[1829?] 
My dear Mrs. Hughes, — 

Were you ever engaged in a fair bout of setting to 
rights? but I need not ask; I know how little you would 
mind what annoys my ponderous person so much, and in 
my mind's eye I see you riding on the whirlwind and 
directing the storm like the fairy Whippity Stourie her- 
self. Dr. Hughes will comprehend the excess of my an- 
noyance in the task of turning all my books over each 
other to give a half yearly review of the lost, stolen, and 



40 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE [^t. 23 

strayed, which disturbs my temper as much as the gallery 
stairs do my person. . . . 

I have had a very severe loss in my old & faithful 
Gillian a Chriah, that is, Man of the belt, Thomas Purdie, 
and though I am on most occasions like Edward Bruce 
"who used not to make moan for others, & loved not that 
others should lament for him," yet on this occasion I 
have felt very acute sorrow. I was so much accustomed 
to the poor fellow that I feel as if I had lost feet & hands, 
so ready was he always to supply the want of either. 
Do I wish a tree to be cut down, I miss Tom with the 
Axe. — Do I meet a bad step, and there are such things 
in my walks as you well know, Tom's powerful arm is no 
more at my command. Besides all this, there is another 
grievance. I am naturally rather shy; you laugh when I 
say this, but it is very true; I am naturally shy, though 
bronzed over by the practice of the law and a good deal 
of commerce with the world. But it is inexpressibly dis- 
agreeable to me to have all the gradations of familiarity 
to go through, with another familiar, till we are suffi- 
ciently intimate to be at ease with him. ... 



[^t.23] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 

1772-1834 
To Thomas Poole 

[COLERIDGE AS TRAVELLER] 

May 29, 1796. 
My dear Poole, — 

This said caravan does not leave Bridgewater till nine. 
In the market place stands the hustings. I mounted it, 
and, pacing the boards, mused on bribery, false swearing, 
and other foibles of election times. I have wandered, too, 
by the river Parret, which looks as filthy as if all the 
parrots of the House of Commons had been washing their 
consciences therein. Dear gutter of Stowey! Were I 
transported to Italian plains, and lay by the side of the 
streamlet that murmured through an orange grove, I would 
think of thee, dear gutter of Stowey, and wish that I 
were poring on thee I 

So much by way of rant. I have eaten three eggs, 



Mt. 24] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 41 

swallowed sundries of tea and bread and butter, purely 
for the purpose of amusing myself ! I have seen the horse 
fed. When at Cross, where I shall dine, I shall think of 
your happy dinner, celebrated under the auspices of hum- 
ble independence, supported by brotherly love! I am 
writing, you understand, for no worldly purpose but that 
of avoiding anxious thoughts. Apropos of honey-pie, 
Caligula or Elagabalus (I forget which) had a dish of 
nightingales' tongues served up. What think you of the 
stings of bees? God bless you! My filial love to your 
mother, and fraternity to your sister. Tell Ellen Cruik- 
shank that in my next parcel to you I will send my 
Haleswood poem to her. Heaven protect her and you 
and Sara and your mother and, like a bad shilling passed 
off between a handful of guineas, 

Your affectionate friend and brother, 
S. T. Coleridge. 

P.S. — Don't forget to send by Milton* my old clothes, 
and linen that once wees clean, et cetera. A pretty peri' 
phrasis that! 



[^t. 24] 

To John Thelwall 

[COLERIDGE DESCRIBES HIMSELF] 

Saturday, November 19, [1796]. 
Oxford Street^ Bristol. 
. . , Your portrait of yourself interested me. As to 
me, my face, unless when animated by immediate elo- 
quence, expresses great sloth, and great, indeed, almost 
idiotic good-nature. 'Tis a mere carcass of a face; fat, 
flabby, and expressive chiefly of inexpression. Yet I am 
told that my eyes, eyebrows, and forehead are physiog- 
nomically good ; but of this the deponent knoweth not. As 
to my shape, 'tis a good shape enough if measured, but 
my gait is awkward, and the walk of the whole man 
indicates indolence capable of energies. I am, and ever 
have been, a great reader, and have read almost everything 
— -a library cormorant. I am deep in all out of the way 

* The carrier. 



42 SAMUEL TAYLOK COLEEIDGE [^t. 24 

books, whether of the monkish times, or of the puritanical 
era. I have read and digested most of the historical 
writers ; but I do not like history. Metaphysics and poetry 
and "facts of mind," that is, accounts of all the strange 
phantasms that ever possessed "your philosophy"; dream- 
ers, from Thoth the Egyptian to Taylor the English pagan, 
are my darling studies. In short, I seldom read except to 
amuse myself, and I am almost always reading. Of useful 
knowledge, I am a so-so chemist, and I love chemistry. 
All else is hlank; but I will be (please God) an horticul- 
turalist and a farmer. I compose very little, and I abso- 
lutely hate composition, and such is my dislike that even 
a sense of duty is sometimes too weak to overpower it. 

I cannot breathe through my nose, so my mouth, with 
sensual thick lips, is almost always open. In conversation 
I am impassioned, and oppose what I deem error with an 
eagerness which is often mistaken for personal asperity; 
but I am ever so swallowed up in the thing that I per- 
fectly forget my opponent. Such am I. I am just going 
to read Dupuis' twelve octavos, which I have got from 
London. I shall read only one octavo a week, for I can- 
not speak French at all and I read it slowly. 

My wife is well and desires to be remembered to you 
and your Stella and little ones. N.B. — Stella (among the 
Romans) was a man's name. All the classics are against 
youj but our Swift, I suppose, is authority for this un- 
sexing. 

Write on the receipt of this, and believe me as ever, 
with affectionate esteem, 

Your sincere friend, 

S. T. Coleridge. 
[^t. 24] 

To Thomas Poole 
[removing to nether stowey] 

Sunday morning, [ ? December 18, 1796.] 
My dear Poole, — 

I wrote to you with improper impetuosity; but I had 
been dwelling so long on the circumstance of living near 
you, that my mind was thrown by your letter into the 
feelings of those distressful dreams where we imagine 
ourselves falling from precipices. I seemed falling from 



^t. 24] SAMUEL TAYLOK COLERIDGE 43 

the summit of my fondest desires, whirled from the height 
just as I had reached it. 

We shall want none of the Woman's furniture ; we have 
enough for ourselves. What with boxes of books, and 
chests of drawers, and kitchen furniture, and chairs, and 
our bed and bed-linen, etc., we shall have enough to fill 
a small waggon, and to-day I shall make enquiry among 
my trading acquaintance, whether it would be cheaper to 
hire a waggon to take them straight to Stowey, than to 
put them in the Bridgwater waggon. Taking in the 
double trouble and expense cf putting them in the drays 
to carry them to the public waggon, and then seeing them 
packed again, and again to be unpacked and packed at 
Bridgwater, I much question whether our goods would 
be good for anything. I am very poorly, not to say ill. 
My face monstrously swollen — my recondite eye sits dis- 
tent quaintly, behind the flesh-hill and looks as little as 
a tomtit's. And I have a sore throat that prevents my 
eating aught but spoon-meat without great pain. And I 
have a rheumatic complaint in the back part of my head 
and shoulders. Now all this demands a small portion of 
Christian patience, taking in our present circumstances. 
My apothecary says it will be madness for me to walk to 
Stowey on Tuesday, as, in the furious zeal of a new 
convert to economy, I had resolved to do. My wife will 
stay a week or fortnight after me; I think it not im- 
probable that the weather may break up by that time. 
However, if I do not get worse, I will be with you by 
Wednesday or Thursday at the furthest, so as to be there 
before the waggon. Is there any grate in the house? I 
should think we might Rumfordize one of the chimneys. 
I shall bring down with me a dozen yards of green list. 
I can endure cold but not a cold room. If we can but 
contrive to make two rooms warm and ivholesome, we will 
laugh in the faces of gloom and ill-lookingness. 

I shall lose the post if I say a word more. You thor- 
oughly and in every nook and corner of your heart for- 
give me for my letters? Indeed, indeed, Poole, I know 
no one whom I esteem more — no one friend whom I love 
so much. But bear with my infirmities! God bless you, 
and your grateful and affectionate 

S. T. Coleridge. 



44 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE [^t. 25 

[^t. 25] 

To HIS Wife 
[the voyage to Germany] 

Hamburg, September 19, 1798. 
. . . Over what place does the moon hang to your eye, 
my dearest Sara? To me it hangs over the left bank of 
the Elbe, and a long trembling road of moonlight reaches 
from thence up to the stern of our vessel, and there it 
ends. We have dropped anchor in the middle of the 
stream, thirty miles from Cuxhaven, where we arrived this 
morning at eleven o'clock, after an unusually fine passage 
of only forty-eight hours. The Captain agreed to take 
all the passengers up to Hamburg for ten guineas; my 
share amounted only to half a guinea. We shall be there, 
if no fogs intervene, to-morrow morning. Chester was 
ill the whole voyage ; Wordsworth shockingly ill ; his sister 
worst of all, and I neither sick nor giddy, but gay as a 
lark. The sea rolled rather high, but the motion was 
pleasant to me. The stink of a sea cabin in a packet 
(what with the bilge-water, and what from the crowd of 
sick passengers) is horrible. I remained chiefly on deck. 
We left Yarmouth Sunday morning, September 16, at 
eleven o'clock. Chester and Wordsworth ill immediately. 
Our passengers were : ^ Wordsworth, * Chester, S. T. Cole- 
ridge, a Dane, second Dane, third Dane, a Prussian, a 
Hanoverian and * his servant, a German tailor and his 

* wife, a French X emigrant and * French servant, * two 
English gentlemen, and X a Jew. All these with the prefix 

* were sick, those marked ^ horribly sick. The view of 
Yarmouth from the sea is interesting; besides, it was 
English ground that was flying away from me. When 
we lost sight of land, the moment that we quite lost sight 
of it and the heavens all around me rested upon the 
water, my dear babes came upon me like a flash of light- 
ning; I saw their faces so distinctly! This day enriched 
me with characters and I passed it merrily. Each of 
these characters I will delineate to you in my journal, 
which you and Poole alternately receive regularly as soon 
as I arrive at any settled place, which will be in a week. 
Till then I can do little more than give you notice of 
my safety and my faithful affection to you (but the jour- 



^t. 25] SAMUEL TAYLOE COLERIDGE 45 

nal will commence from the day of my arrival at London, 
and give every day's occurrence, etc.). I have it written, 
but I have neither paper or time to transcribe it. I trust 
nothing to memory. The Ocean is a noble thing by 
night; a beautiful white cloud of foam at momentary 
intervals roars and rushes by the side of the vessel, and 
stars of flame dance and sparkle and go out in it, and 
every now and then light detachments of foam dart away 
from the vessel's side with their galaxies of stars and 
scour out of sight like a Tartar troop over a wilderness. 
What these stars are I cannot say ; the sailors say they are 
fish spawn, which is phosphorescent. The noisy passen- 
gers swear in all their languages, with drunken hiccups, 
that I shall write no more, and I must join them. Indeed, 
they present a rich feast for a dramatist. My kind love 
to Mrs. Poole (with what wings of swiftness would I fly 
home if I could find something in Germany to do her 
good!). Remember me affectionately to Ward, and my 
love to the Chesters (Bessy, Susan, and Julia) and to 
Cruickshank, etc., etc., Ellen and Mary when you see them, 
and to Lavinia Poole and Harriet and Sophy, and be sure 
to give my kind love to Nanny. I associate so much of 
Hartley's infancy with her, so many of his figures, looks, 
words, and antics with her form, that I shall never cease 
to think of her, poor girl ! without [sic] interest. Tell my 
best good friend, my dear Poole ! that all his manuscripts, 
with Wordsworth's Tragedy, are safe in Josiah Wedg- 
wood's hands; and they will be returned to him together. 
Good-night, my dear, dear Sara! — "every night when I go 
to bed, and every morning when I rise," I will think with 
yearning love of you and of my blessed babies! Once 
more, my dear Sara ! good-night. 

Wednesday afternoon, four o'clock. — ^We are safe in 
Hamburg — an ugly city that stinks in every corner; 
house, and room worse than cabins, sea-sickness, or bilge- 
water! The hotels are all crowded. With great difficulty 
we have procured a very filthy room at a large expense; 
but we shall move to-morrow. We get very excellent claret 
for a trifle — a guinea sells at present for more than 
twenty-three shillings here. But for all particulars I 
must refer your patience to my journal, and I must get 
some proper paper — I shall have to pay a shilling or 



46 SAMUEL TAYLOE COLEEIDGE [^t. 29 

eighteen pence with every letter. N.B.— Johnson the 
bookseller, without any poems sold to him, but purely out 
of affection conceived for me, and as part of anything I 
might do for him, gave me an order on Eemnant at 
Hamburg for thirty pounds. The ''Epea Pteroenta," an 
Essay on Population, and a "History of Paraguay," will 
come down for me directed to Poole, and for Poole's 
reading. Likewise I have desired Johnson to print in 
quarto a little poem of mine, one of which quartos must 
be sent to my brother, Eev. G. C, Ottery St. Mary, car- 
riage paid. Did you receive my letter directed in a 
different hand, with the 30 1. banknote? The "Morning 
Post" and Magazine will come to you as before. If not 
regularly, Stuart desires that you will write to him. I 
pray you, my dear love! read Edgeworth's "Essay on 
Education" — read it heart and soul, and if you approve 
of the mode, teach Hartley his letters. I am very de- 
sirous that you should teach him to read; and they point 
out some easy modes. J. Wedgwood informed me that the 
Edgeworths were most miserable when children ; and yet 
the father in his book is ever vapouring about their hap- 
piness. However, there are very good things in the work 
— and some nonsense. 

Kiss my Hartley and Bercoo baby brodder (kiss them 
for their dear father, whose heart will never be absent 
from them many hours together). My dear Sara! I think 
of you with affection and a desire to be home, and in the 
full and noblest sense of the word, and after the antique 
principles of Religion, unsophisticated by Philosophy, will 
be, I trust, your husband faithful unto death, 

S. T. Coleridge. 

[^t. 29] 

To HIS Wife 
[a visit to London] 

King Street^ Covent Garden^ 
[February 24, 1802.] 
My dear Love, — 

I am sure it will make you happy to hear that both 
my health and spirits have greatly improved, and I have 
small doubts that a residence of two years in a mild and 



^t. 29] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 47 

even climate will, with God's blessing, give me a new 
lease in a better constitution. You may be well assured 
that I shall do nothing rashly, but our journey thither 
I shall defray by letters to Poole and the Wedgwoods, or 
more probably addressed to Mawman, the bookseller, who 
will honour my drafts in return. Of course I shall not 
go till I have earned all the money necessary for the 
journey that I can. The plan will be this, unless you can 
think of any better. Wordsworth will marry soon after 
my return, and he, Mary, and Dorothy will be our com- 
panions and neighbours. Southey means, if it is in his 
power, to pass into Spain that way. About July we shall 
all set sail from Liverpool to Bordeaux. Wordsworth has 
not yet settled whether he shall be married from Gallow 
Hill or at Grasmere. But they will of course make a 
point that either Sarah shall be with Mary or Mary with 
Sarah previous to so long a parting. If it be decided 
that Sarah is to come to Grasmere, I shall return by 
York, which will be but a few miles out of the way, and 
bring her. At all events, I shall stay a few days at 
Derby, — for whom, think you, should I meet in Davy's 
lecture-room but Joseph Strutt? He behaved most af- 
fectionately to me, and pressed me with great earnestness 
to pass through Darley (which is on the road to Derby) 
and stay a few days at his house among my old friends. 
I assure you I was much affected by his kind and affec- 
tionate invitation (though I felt a little awkward, not 
knowing irhom I might venture to ask after). I could 
not bring out the word "Mrs. Evans," and so said, "Your 
sister, sir? I hope she is well!" 

On Sunday I dined at Sir William Rush's, and on 
Monday likewise, and went with them to Mrs. Billing- 
ton's Benefit. 'Twas the "Beggar's Opera;" it was per- 
fection! I seem to have acquired a new sense by hearing 
her. I wished you to have been there. I assure you I 
am quite a man of fashion; so many titled acquaintances 
and handsome carriages stopping at my door, and fine 
cards. And then I am such an exquisite judge of music 
and painting, and pass criticisms on furniture and chan- 
deliers, and pay such very handsome compliments to all 
women of fashion, that I do verily believe that if I were 
to stay three months in town and have tolerable health 



48 SAMUEL TAYLOE COLEEIDGE [^t. 29 

and spirits, I should be a Thing in vogue, — the very 
tonnish poet and Jemmy-Jessamy-fine-talker in town. If 
you were only to see the tender smiles that I occasionally 
receive from the Honourable Mrs. Damer! you would 
scratch her eyes out for jealousy! And then there's the 

sweet (N.B. — musky) Lady Charlotte ! Nay, but I 

won't tell you her name, — you might perhaps take it into 
your head to write an anonymous letter to her, and dis- 
trust our little innocent amoiir. 

Oh that I were at Keswick with my darlings ! My Hart- 
ley and my fat Derwent! God bless you, my dear Sarah! 
I shall return in love and cheerfulness, and therefore in 
pleasurable convalescence, if not in health. We shall try 
to get poor dear little Kobert into Christ's Hospital; that 
wretch of a Quaker will do nothing. The skulking rogue! 
just to lay hold of the time when Mrs. Lovell was on a 
visit to Southey; there was such low cunning in the 
thought. 

Eemember me most kindly to Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson, 
and tell Mr. Jackson that I have not shaken a hand 
since I quitted him with more esteem and glad feeling 
than I shall soon, I trust, shake his with. God bless you, 
and your affectionate and faithful husband (notwithstand- 
ing the Honourable Mrs. D. and Lady Charlotte!), 

S. T. Coleridge. 

[^t. 29] 

To W. SOTHEBY 

[hartley and derwent] 

Greta Hall, Keswick, 
Tuesday, September 27, 1802. 
My dear Sir, — 

The river is full, and Lodore is full, and silver-fillets 
come out of clouds and glitter in every ravine of all the 
mountains; and hail lies like snow upon their tops, and 
the impetuous gusts from Borrowdale snatch the water 
up high, and continually at the bottom of the lake it is 
not distinguishable from snow slanting before the wind — 
and under this seeming snow-drift the sui:ishine gleams, 
and over all the nether half of the Lake it is bright and 
dazzles, a cauldron of melted silver boiling! It is in very 



^t. 31] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 49 

truth a sunny, misty, cloudy, dazzling, howling, omniform 
day, and I have been looking at as pretty a sight as a 
father's eyes could well see — Hartley, and little Derwent 
running in the green where the gusts blow most madly, 
both with their hair floating and tossing, a miniature of 
the agitated trees, below which they were playing, inebri- 
ate both with the pleasure — Hartley whirling round for 
joy, Derwent eddying, half-willingly, half by the force 
of the gust, — driven backward, struggling forward, and 
shouting his little hymn of joy. I can write thus to you, 
my dear sir, with a confident spirit; for when I received 
your letter on the 22nd, and had read the "family his- 
tory," I laid down the sheet upon my desk, and sate for 
half an hour thinking of you, dreaming of you, till the 
tear grown cold upon my cheek awoke me from my 
reverie. May you live long, long, thus blessed in your 
family, and often, often, may you all sit around one 
fireside. Oh happy should I be now and then to sit among 
you — your pilot and guide in some of your summer 
walks! . . . 

[zEt. 31] 

To Robert Southey 
[coleridge "thunders and lightens"] 

Rickman's Office^ H. of Commons^ 
Eebruary 20, 1804, Monday noon. 
Dear Southey, — 

The affair with Godwin began thus. We were talking 
of reviews, and bewailing their ill effects. I detailed my 
plan for a review, to occupy regularly the fourth side of 
an evening paper, etc., etc., adding that it had been a 
favorite scheme with me for two years past. Godwin 
very coolly observed that it was a plan which "no man 
who had a spark of honest pride" could join with. "No 
man, not the slave of the grossest egotism could unite in," 
etc. Cool and civil! I ask whether he and most others 
did not already do what I proposed in prefaces. "Aye! 
in prefaces; that is quite a diiferent thing." I then ad- 
verted to the extreme rudeness of the speech with regard 
to myself, and added that it was not only a very rough. 



50 SAMUEL TAYLOK COLERIDGE [iEt. 31 

but likewise a very mistaken opinion, for I was nearly if 
not quite sure that it had received the approbation both 
of you and of Wordsworth. "Yes, sir! just so! of Mr. 
Southey — just what I said," and so on more Godwinidno 
in language so ridiculously and exclusively appropriate 
to himself, that it would have made you merry. It was 
even as if he was looking into a sort of moral looking- 
glass, without knowing what it was, and, seeing his own 
very, very Godwinship, had by a merry conceit christened 
it in your name, not without some annexment of me and 
Wordsworth. I replied by laughing in the first place at 
the capricious nature" of his nicety, that what was gross 
in folio should become double-refined in octavo foolscap 
or pickpocket quartos, blind slavish egotism in small pica, 
manly discriminating self-respect in double primer, mod- 
est as maiden's blushes between boards, or in calf-skin, 
and only not obscene in naked sheets. And then in a 
deep and somewhat sarcastic tone, tried to teach him to 
speak more reverentially of his betters, by stating what 
and who they were, by whom honoured, by whom depre- 
ciated. Well! this gust died away. I was going home to 
look over his Duncity; he begged me to stay till his 
return in half an hour. I, meaning to take nothing more 
the whole evening, took a crust of bread, and Mary 
Lamb made me a glass of punch of most deceitful 
strength. Instead of half an hour, Godwin stayed an 
hour and a half. In came his wife, Mrs. Fenwick, and 
four young ladies, and just as Godwin returned, supper 
came in, and it was now useless to go (at supper I was 
rather a mirth-maker than merry). I was disgusted at 
heart with the grossness and vulgar insanocecity of this 
dim-headed prig of a philosophocide, when, after supper, 
his ill stars impelled him to renew the contest. I begged 
him not to goad me, for that I feared my feelings would 
not long remain in my power. He (to my wonder and 
indignation) persisted (I had not deciphered the cause), 
and then, as he well said, I did "thunder and lighten at 
him" with a vengeance for more than a hour and a half. 
Every eifort of self-defence only made him more ridicu- 
lous. If I had been Truth in person, I could not have 
spoken more accurately ; but it was truth in a war-chariot, 
drawn by the three Furies, and the reins had slipped out 



^t. 31] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 51 

of the goddess's hands! . . . Yet he did not absolutely 
give way till that stinging contrast which I drew between 
him as a man, as a writer, and a benefactor of society, 
and those of whom he had spoken so irreverently. In 
short, I suspect that I seldom, at any time and for so 
great a length of time, so continuously displayed so much 
power, and do hope and trust that never did I display one 
half the scorn and ferocity. The next morning, the mo- 
ment when I awoke, O mercy! I did feel like a very 
wretch. I got up and immediately wrote and sent off 
by a porter, a letter, I dare affirm an affecting and elo- 
quent letter to him, and since then have been working 
for him, for I was heart-smitten with the recollection that 
I had said all, all in the presence of his wife. But if I 
had known all I now know, I will not say that I should 
not have apologised, but most certainly I should not 
have made such an apology, for he confessed to Lamb 
that he should not have persisted in irritating me, but 
that Mrs. Godwin had twitted him for his prostration 
before me, as if he was afraid to say his life was his 
own in my presence. He admitted, too, that although 
he never to the very last suspected that I was tipsy, yet 
he saw clearly that something unusual ailed me, and that 
I had not been my natural self the whole evening. What 
a poor creature ! To attack a man who had been so kind 
to him at the instigation of such a woman! And what a 
woman to instigate him to quarrel with me, who with as 
much power as any, and more than most of his acquaint- 
ances, had been perhaps the only one who had never made 
a butt of him — who had uniformly spoken respectfully 
to him. But it is past I And I trust will teach me wis- 
dom in future. 

I have undoubtedly suffered a great deal from a cow- 
ardice in not daring to repel unassimilating acquaintances 
who press forward upon my friendship; but I dare aver, 
that if the circumstances of each particular case were 
examined, they would prove on the whole honourable to 
me rather than otherwise. But I have had enough and 
done enough. Hereafter I shall show a different face, and 
calmly inform those who press upon me that my health, 
spirits, and occupation alike make it necessary for me to 
confine myself to the society of those with whom I have 



52 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE [.Et. 34 

the nearest and highest connection. So help me God! I 
will hereafter be quite sure that I do really and in the 
whole of my heart esteem and like a man before I permit 
him to call me friend. 

I am very anxious that you should go on with your 
"Madoc." If the thought had happened to suggest itself 
to you originally and with all these modifications and 
polypus tendrils with which it would have caught hold 
of your subject, I am afraid that you would not have 
made the first voyage as interesting at least as it ought 
to be, so as to preserve entire the fit proportion of in- 
terest. But go on! 

I shall call on Longman as soon as I receive an answer 
from him to a note which I sent. . . . 

God bless you and 

S. T. Coleridge. 

[^t. 34] 

To HIS Wife 

[a visit to sir GEORGE BEAUMONT's] 

[Farmhouse near Coleorton,] 

December 25, 1806. 
My dear Sara, — 

By my letter from Derby you will have been satisfied 
of our safety so far. We had, however, been grossly de- 
ceived as to the equi-distance of Derby and Loughborough. 
The expense was nearly double. Still, however, I was in 
such torture and my boils bled, throbbed, and stahhed so 
con furia, that perhaps I have no reason for regret. At 
Coleorton we found them dining, Sunday, ^/^ past one 
o'clock. To-day is Xmas day. Of course we were wel- 
comed with an uproar of sincere joy: and Hartley hung 
suspended between the ladies for a long minute. The 
children, too, jubilated at Hartley's arrival.* He has 
behaved very well indeed — only that when he could get 
out of the coach at dinner, I was obliged to be in incessant 
watch to prevent him from rambling off into the fields. 
He twice ran into a field, and to the further end of it, 
and once after the dinner was on table, I was out five 

* Hartley was at this time ten years old. 



.Et. 34] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 53 

minutes seeking- him in great alarm, and found him at 
the further end of a wet meadow, on the marge of a 
river. After dinner, fearful of losing our places by the 
window (of the long coach), I ordered him to go into the 
coach and sit in the place where he was before, and I 
would follow. In about five minutes I followed. No 
Hartley ! Halloing — in. vain ! At length, where should I 
discover him! In the same meadow, only at a greater 
distance, and close down on the very edge of the water. 
I was angry from downright fright ! And what, think 
you, was Cataphract's excuse! "It was a misunderstand- 
ing. Father! I thought, you see, that you bid me go to 
the very same place, in the meadow where I was." I told 
him that he had interpreted the text by the suggestions 
of the flesh, not the inspiration of the spirit; and his Wish 
the naughty father of the baseborn Thought. However, 
saving and excepting his passion for field truantry, and 
his hatred of confinement (in which his fancy at least — 

Doth sing a doleful song about green fields; 
How sweet it were in woods and wild savannas ; 
To hunt for food and be a naked man 
And wander up and down at liberty ! ) , 

he is a very good and sweet child, of strict honour and 
truth, from which he never deviates except in the form 
of sophism when he sports his logical false dice in the 
game of excuses. This, however, is the mere effect of his 
activity of thought, and his aiming at being clever and 
ingenious. He is exceedingly amiable toward children. 
All here love him most dearly: and your namesake takes 
upon her all the duties of his mother and darling friend, 
with all the mother's love and fondness. He is very fond 
of her; but it is very pretty to hear how, without any one 
set declaration of' his attachment to Mrs. Wilson and Mr. 
Jackson, his love for them continually breaks out — so 
many things remind him of them, and in the coach he 
talked to the strangers of them just as if everybody must 
know Mr. J. and Mrs. W. His letter is only half written; 
so cannot go to-day. We all wish you a merry Christmas 
and many following ones. Concerning the London Lec- 
tures, we are to discuss it, William and I, this evening. 



54 SAMUEL TAYLOK COLEKIDGE [^t. 41 

and I shall write you at full the day after to-morrow. 
To-morrow there is no post, but this letter I mean merely 
as bearer of the tidings of our safe arrival. I am better 
than usual. Hartley has coughed a little every morning 
since he left Greta Hall; but only such a little cough as 
you heard from him at the door. He is in high health. 
All the children have the hooping-cough; but in an ex- 
ceedingly mild degree. Neither Sarah Hutchinson nor I 
ever remember to have had it. Hartley is made to keep 
at a distance from them, and only to play with Johnny 
in the open air. I found my spice-megs; but many 
papers I miss. 

The post boy waits. 

My love to Mrs. Lovell, to Southey and Edith, and be- 
lieve me anxiously and forever, 

Your sincere friend, 

S. T. Coleridge. 
t^t. 41] 

To Joseph Cottle 
[laudanum] 

April 26, 1814. 

You have poured oil in the raw and festering wound 
of an old friend's conscience, Cottle! but it is oil of 
vitriol! I but barely glanced at the middle of the first 
page of your letter, and have seen no more of it — not 
from resentment (God forbid!), but from the state of my 
bodily and mental sufferings, that scarcely permitted hu- 
man fortitude to let in a new visitor of affliction. 

The object of my present reply is to state the case just 
as it is. Eirst, that for ten years the anguish of my spirit 
has been indescribable, the sense of my danger staring, 
but the consciousness of my GUILT worse, far worse than 
all. I have prayed, with drops of agony on my brow, 
trembling not only before the justice of my Maker, but 
even before the mercy of my Redeemer. "I gave thee so 
many talents, what hast thou done with them ?" Sec- 
ondly, overwhelmed as I am with a sense of my direful 
infirmity, I have never attempted to disguise or conceal 
the cause. On the contrary, not only to friends have I 
stated the whole case with tears and the very bitterness 
of shame, but in two instances I have warned young men. 



^t. 41] SAMUEL TAYLOE COLEKIDGE 55 

mere acquaintances, who had spoken of having taken 
laudanum, of the direful consequences, by an awful ex- 
position of the tremendous effects on myself. 

Thirdly, though before God I cannot lift up my eyelids, 
and only do not despair of his mercy, because to despair 
would be adding crime to crime, yet to my fellowmen I 
may say that I was seduced into the ACCURSED habit 
ignorantly. I had been almost bed-ridden for many 
months with swellings in my knees. In a medical jour- 
nal, I unhappily met with an account of a cure performed 
in a similar case (or what appeared to me so), by rubbing 
of laudanum, at the same time taking a given dose in- 
ternally. It acted like a charm, like a miracle! I re- 
covered the use of my limbs, of my appetite, of my spirits, 
and this continued for a fortnight. At length the un- 
usual stimulus subsided, the complaint returned, the sup- 
posed remedy was recurred to — but I cannot go through 
the dreary history. 

Suffice it to say, that effects were produced which acted 
on me by terror and cowardice, of pain and sudden death, 
not (so help me God!) by any temptation of pleasure, or 
expectation, or desire of exciting pleasurable sensations. 
On the very contrary, Mrs. Morgan and her sister will 
bear witness, so far as to say, that the longer I abstained 
the higher my spirits were, the keener my enjoyment — 
till the moment, the direful moment, arrived when my 
pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such 
a dreadful falling abroad, as it were, of my whole frame, 
such intolerable restlessness, and incipient bewilderment, 
that in the last of my several attempts to abandon the 
dire poison, I exclaimed in agony, which I now repeat 
in seriousness and solemnity, "I am too poor to hazard 
this." Had I but a few hundred pounds, but £200 — half 
to send to Mrs. Coleridge, and half to place myself in a 
private madhouse, where I could procure nothing but 
what a physician thought proper, and where a medical 
attendant could be constantly with me for two or three 
months (in less than that time life or death would be 
determined), then there might be hope. Now there is 
none ! ! God ! how willingly would I place myself under 
Dr. Fox, in his establishment; for my case is a species 
of madness, only that it is a derangement, an utter im- 



66 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE [^t. 43 

potence of the volition, and not of the intellectual facul- 
ties. You bid me rouse myself: go bid a man paralytic 
in both arms, to rub them briskly together, and that will 
cure him. "Alas!" he would reply, "that I cannot move 
my arms is my complaint and my misery." 

May God bless you, and your affectionate, but most 
afflicted, 

S. T. Coleridge. 

[Mt. 43] 

To James Gillman 
[lamb's ''archangel, a little damaged""] 

42, Norfolk Street, Strand^ 
Saturday noon [April 13, 1816.] 
My dear Sir, — 

The very first half hour I was with you- convinced me 
that I should owe my reception into your family ex- 
clusively to motives not less flattering to me than honour- 
able to yourself. I trust we shall ever in matters of in- 
tellect be reciprocally serviceable to each other. Men of 
sense generally come to the same conclusion; but they 
are likely to contribute to each other's exchangement of 
view, in proportion to the distance or even opposition of 
the points from which they set out. Travel and the 
strange variety of situations and employments on which 
chance has thrown me, in the course of my life, might 
have made me a mere man of observation, if pain and 
sorrow and self-miscomplacence had not forced my mind 
in on itself, and so formed habits of meditation. It is 
now as much my nature to evolve the fact from the law, 
as that of a practical man to deduce the law from the 
fact. 

With respect to pecuniary remuneration, allow me to 
say, I must not at least be suffered to make any addition 
to your family expenses — though I cannot offer anything 
that would be in any way adequate to my sense of the 
service; for that, indeed, there could not be a compen- 
sation, as it must be returned in kind, by esteem and 
grateful affection. 

And now of myself. My ever wakeful reason, and the 
keenness of my moral feelings, will secure you from all 



^t. 46] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 57 

unpleasant circumstances connected with me, save only 
one, viz., the evasion of a specific madness. You will 
never hear anything but truth from me: — prior habits 
render it out of my power to tell an untruth, but unless 
carefully observed, I dare not promise that I should not, 
with regard to this detested poison, be capable of acting 
one. No sixty hours have yet passed without my having 
taken laudanum, though for the last week [in] compara- 
tively trifling doses. 1 have full belief that your anxiety 
need not be extended beyond the first week, and for the 
first week I shall not, I must not, be permitted to leave 
your house, unless with you. Delicately or indelicately, 
this must be done, and both the servants and the assist- 
ant must receive absoltite commands from you. The 
stimulus of conversation suspends the terror that haunts 
my mind; but when I am alone, the horrors I have suf- 
fered from laudanum, the degradation, the blighted util- 
ity, almost overwhelm me. If (as I feel for the jirst time 
a soothing confidence it will prove) I should leave you 
restored to my moral and bodily health, it is not myself 
only that will love and honour you; every friend I have 
(and thank God! in spite of this wretched vice, I have 
many and warm ones, who were friends of my youth and 
have never deserted me) will thank you with reverence. 
I have taken no notice of your kind apologies. If I could 
not be comfortable in your house, and with your family, 
I should deserve to be miserable. If you could make it 
convenient I should wish to be with you by Monday even- 
ing, as it would prevent the necessity of taking fresh 
lodgings in town. 

With respectful compliments to Mrs. Gillman and her 
sister, I remain, dear sir, your much obliged 

S. T. Coleridge. 

[^t. 46] 

To James Gillman 
[sea-bathing] 
[Ramsgate, Postmark, August 20, 1819.] 
My dear Friend, — 

Whether from the mere intensity of the heat, and the 
restless, almost sleepless, nights in consequence, or from 



58 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE [.Et. 61 

incautious exposure to draughts; or whether simply the 
change of air and the sea bath was repairing the in- 
testinal canal (and bad indeed must the road be which 
is not better than a road a-mending, a hint which our 
revolutionary reformers would do well to attend to) or 
from whatever cause, I have been miserably unwell for 
the last three days — but last night passed a tolerably good 
night, and, finding myself convalescent this morning, I 
bathed, and now am still better, having had a glorious 
tumble in the waves, though the water is still not cold 
enough for my liking. The weather, however, is evi- 
dently on the change, and we have now a succession of 
flying April showers, and needle rains. My bath is about 
a mile and a quarter from the Lime Grove, a wearisome 
travail by the deep crumbly sands, but a very pleasant 
breezy walk along the top of the cliff, from which you 
descend through a deep steep lane cut through the chalk 
rocks. The tide comes up to the end of the lane, and 
washes the cliif, but a little before or a little after high 
tide there are nice clean seats of rock with foot-baths, 
and then an expanse of sand, greater than I need; and 
exactly a hundred of my strides from the end of the lane 
there is a good, roomy, arched cavern, with an oven or 
cupboard in it, where one's clothes may be put free from 
the sand. ... I find that I can write no more if I am 
to send this by to-day's post. Pray, if you can with any 
sort of propriety, do come down to me — to us, I suppose 
I ought to say. We are all as should be But (xovCTxpouaXu 
96py.aX. . . . 

God bless you and 
S. T. 0. 
[^t. 61] 

To Adam Steinmetz Kennard 
[within two weeks of the end] 

Grove, Highgate, July 13, 1834. 
My dear Godchild, — 

I offer up the same fervent prayer for you now as I 
did kneeling before the altar when you were baptized 
into Christ, and solemnly received as a living member of 
His spiritual body, the church. Years must pass before 
you will be able to read with an understanding heart what 



^t. 61] SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 59 

I now write. But I trust that the all-gracious God, the 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, 
who by His only-begotten Son (all mercies in one sov- 
ereign mercy!) has redeemed you from evil ground, and 
willed you to be born out of darkness, but into light; out 
of death, but into life; out of sin, but into righteousness; 
even into "the Lord our righteousness," — I trust that He 
will graciously hear the prayers of your dear parents, and 
be with you as the spirit of health and growth, in body 
and in mind. My dear godchild, you received from 
Christ's minister at the baptismal font, as your Christian 
name, the name of a most dear friend of your father's, 
and who was to me even as a son, — the late Adam Stein- 
metz, whose fervent aspirations and paramount aim, even 
from early youth, was to be a Christian in thought, word, 
and deed; in will, mind, and affections. I, too, your god- 
father, have known what the enjoyments and advantages 
of this life are, and what the more refined pleasures which 
learning and intellectual power can give; I now, on the 
eve of my departure, declare to you, and earnestly pray 
that you may hereafter live and act on the conviction, 
that health is a great blessing; competence, obtained by 
honourable industry, a great blessing; and a great bless- 
ing it is, to have kind, faithful, and loving friends and 
relatives; but that the greatest of all blessings, as it is 
the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a 
Christian. But I have been likewise, through a large por- 
tion of my later life, a sufferer, sorely affected with bodily 
pains, languor, and manifold infirmities; and for the last 
three or four years have, with few and brief intervals, 
been confined to a sick-room, and at this moment, in 
great weakness and heaviness, write from a sick-bed, hope- 
less of recovery, yet without prospect of a speedy removal. 
And I thus, on the brink of the grave, solemnly bear wit- 
ness to you, that the Almighty Redeemer, most gracious 
in His promises to them that truly seek Him, is faithful 
to perform what he has promised ; and has reserved, under 
all pains and infirmities, the peace that passeth all under- 
standing, with the supporting assurance of a reconciled 
God, who will not withdraw His spirit from me in the 
conflict, and in His own time will deliver me from the 
evil one. Oh, my dear godchild ! eminently blessed are 



60 FKANCIS LOKD JEFFREY [^t. 29 

they who begin early to seek, fear, and love their God, 
trusting wholly in the righteousness and mediation of 
their Lord, Redeemer, Saviour, and everlasting High 
Priest, Jesus Christ. Oh, preserve this as a legacy and 
bequest from your unseen godfather and friend, 

S. T. Coleridge. 



[^t. 29] FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY 
1773-1850 
To John Jeffrey 

[the "EDINBURGH REVIEW^"] 

Edinburgh, 2d July, 1803. 
My dear John, — 

It will be a sad thing if your reformation be the cause 
of my falling off; yet it is certain that since you have 
begun to write oftener, my letters have begun to be more 
irregular, &c. 

I am glad you have got our Review, and that you like 
it. Your partiality to my articles is a singular proof of 
your judgment. In No. 3, I do Gentz, Hayley's Cowper, 
Sir J. Sinclair, and Thelwall. In No. 4, which is now 
printing, I have Miss Baillie's Plays, Comparative View 
of Geology, Lady Mary Wortley, and some little ones. I 
do not think you know any of my associates. There is 
the sage Horner, however, whom you have seen, and who 
has gone to the English bar with the resolution of being 
Lord Chancellor; Brougham, a great mathematician, who 
has just published a book upon the Colonial Policy of 
Europe, which all you Americans should read; Rev. Sid- 
ney Smith, and P. Elmsley, two learned Oxonian priests, 
full of jokes and erudition; my excellent little Sanscrit 
Hamilton, who is also in the hands of Bonaparte at 
Fontainebleau ; Thomas Thomson and John Murray, two 
ingenious advocates; and some dozen of occasional con- 
tributors, among whom, the most illustrious, I think, are 
young Watt of Birmingham, and Davy of the Royal In- 
stitution. We sell 2,500 copies already, and hope to do 
double that in six months, if we are puifed enough. I 
wish you could try if you can repandre us upon your 
continent, and use what interest you can with the liter- 



^t. 43] FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY 61 

ati, or rather with the booksellers of New York and Phila- 
delphia. I believe I have not told you that the concern 
has now become to be of some emolument. After the 
fourth number the publishers are to pay the writers no 
less than ten guineas a sheet, which is three times what 
was ever paid before for such a work, and to allow £50 a 
number to an editor. I shall have the offer of that first, 
I believe, and I think I shall take it, with the full power 
of laying it down whenever I think proper. The publi- 
cation is in the highest degree respectable as yet, as there 
are none but gentlemen connected with it. If It ever 
sink into the state of an ordinary bookseller's journal, I 
have done with it. 



[^t. 43] 

To Mrs. Golden 

[THOMAS MOORE ; MISS EDGEWORTH ; OLD ENGLAND] 

Mardocks, 6th May, 1822. 
My dear Fanny, — 

I am on my way back to Scotland, after a three weeks' 
exile in London, and take the leisure of this fine summer 
morning to write you a long letter. I hope you are sensi- 
ble of the compliment I pay you in taking this vast sheet 
of paper, which, to make it the more gracious, I have 
stolen from the quire on which my host. Sir James Mack- 
intosh, is now writing his history. 

I have been very much amused in London, though 
rather too feverishly, so that it is deliciously refreshing 
to get out of its stir and tumult, and sit down to recollect 
all I have seen and heard, amidst the flowers' freshness 
and nightingales of this beautiful country. I was a good 
deal among wits and politicians, of whom you would not 
care much to hear. But I also saw a good deal of Miss 
Edgeworth and Tommy Moore, and something of your 
countryman, Washington Irving, with whom I was very 
happy to renew my acquaintance. Moore is still more 
delightful in society than he is in his writings ; the sweet- 
est-blooded, warmest-hearted, happiest, hopefulest crea- 
ture that ever set fortune at defiance. He was quite 
ruined about three years ago by the treachery of a deputy 



62 FEANCIS LORD JEFFEEY [JKt. 43 

in a small office he held, and forced to reside in France. 
He came over since I came to England, to settle his debts 
by the sacrifice of every farthing he had in the world, 
and had scarcely got to London when he found that the 
whole scheme of settlement had blown up, and that he 
must return in ten days to his exile. And yet I saw no- 
body so sociable, kind, and happy; so resigned, or rather 
so triumphant over fortune, by the buoyancy of his spirits, 
and the inward light of his mind. He told me a great 
deal about Lord Byron, with whom he had lived very 
much abroad, and of whose heart and temper, with all 
his partiality to him, he cannot say anything very favour- 
able. There is nothing gloomy or bitter, however, in his 
ordinary talk, but rather a wild, rough, boyish pleasantry, 
much more like nature than his poetry. 

Miss Edgeworth I had not seen for twenty years, and 
found her very unlike my recollection. 

Have you any idea what sort of a thing a truly elegant 
English woman of fashion is? I suspect not; for it is 
not to be seen almost out of England, and I do not know 
very well how to describe it. Great quietness, simplicity, 
and delicacy of manners, with a certain dignity and self- 
possession that puts vulgarity out of countenance, and 
keeps presumption in awe; a singularly sweet, soft, and 
rather low voice, with remarkable elegance and ease of 
diction; a perfect taste in wit and manners and conver- 
sation, but no loquacity, and rather languid spirits; a 
sort of indolent disdain of display and accomplishments; 
an air of great good-nature and kindness, with but too 
often some heartlessness, duplicity, and ambition. These 
are some of the traits, and such, I think, as would most 
strike an American. You would think her rather cold 
and spiritless; but she would predominate over you in 
the long run; and indeed is a very bewitching and dan- 
gerous creature, more seductive and graceful than any 
other in the world ; but not better nor happier ; and I am 
speaking even of the very best and most perfect. We 
have plenty of loud, foolish things, good humoured, even 
in the highest society. 

Washington Irving is rather low-spirited and silent in 
mixed company, but is agreeable, I think, tete a tete, and 
is very gentle and amiable. He is a good deal in fashion. 



^t. 43] FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY 63 

and has done something to deserve it. I hope you do not 
look on him in America as having flattered our old coun- 
try improperly. I had the honour of dining twice with 
a royal duke, very jovial, loud, familiar, and facetious, 
by no means foolish or uninstructed, but certainly coarse 
and indelicate to a degree quite remarkable in the upper 
classes of society. The most extraordinary man in Eng- 
land is the man in whose house I now am. 

I came down here yesterday by way of Haileybury, 
where I took up Malthus, who is always delightful, and 
brought him here with me. The two professors have 
gone over to the College to their lectures, and return to 
dinner. I proceed on my journey homeward in the even- 
ing. Would you like to know what old England is like? 
and in what it most differs from America? Mostly, I 
think, in the visible memorials of antiquity with which 
it is overspread; the superior beauty of its verdure, and 
the more tasteful and happy state and distribution of its 
woods. Every thing around you here is historical, and 
leads to romantic or interesting recollections. Gray- 
grown church towers, cathedrals, ruined abbeys, castles 
of all sizes and descriptions, in all stages of decay, from 
those that are inhabited to those in whose moats ancient 
trees are growing, and ivy mantling over their mouldered 
fragments. Within sight of this house, for instance, there 
are the remains of the palace of Hunsden, where Queene 
Elizabeth passed her childhood, and Theobalds, where 
King James had his hunting-seat, and the Rye-house, 
where Rumbold's plot was laid, and which is still occu- 
pied by a maltster — such is the permanency of habits and 
professions in this ancient country. Then there are two 
gigantic oak stumps, with a few fresh branches still, which 
are said to have been planted by Edward the III., 
and massive stone bridges over lazy waters; and churches 
that look as old as Christianity; and beautiful groups of 
branchy trees ; and a verdure like nothing else in the uni- 
verse; and all the cottages and lawns fragrant with sweet- 
brier and violets, and glowing with purple lilacs and white 
elders; and antique villages scattering round wide bright 
greens; with old trees and ponds, aud a massive pair of 
oaken stocks preserved from the days of Alfred. With 
you everything is new, and glaring, and angular, and 



64 FKANCI& LOED JEFFKEY [^t. 70 

withal rather frail, slight, and perishable; nothing soft, 
and mellow, and venerable, or that looks as if it would 
ever become so. I will not tell you about Scotland after 
this. It has not these characters of ancient wealth and 
population, but beauties of another kind, which you 
must come and see. 



[^t. 70] 

To Charles Dickens 
[a "mischievous onslaught"] 

Edinburgh, 26th December, 1843. 

Blessings on your kind heart, my dear Dickens! and 
may it always be as light and full as it is kind, and a 
fountain of kindness to all within reach of its beatings! 
We are all charmed with your Carol; chiefly, I think, for 
the genuine goodness which breathes all through it, and 
is the true inspiring angel by which its genius has been 
awakened. The whole scene of the Cratchetts is like the 
dream of a beneficent angel in spite of its broad reality; 
and little Tiny Tim, in life and death almost as sweet 
and as touching as Nelly. And then the school-day scene, 
with that large-hearted, delicate sister, and her true in- 
heritor, with his gall-lacking liver, and milk of human 
kindness for blood, and yet all so natural and so humbly 
and serenely happy! Well, you should be happy your- 
self, for you may be sure you have done more good, and 
not only fastened more kindly feelings, but prompted 
more positive acts of beneficence, by this little publica- 
tion, than can be traced to all the pulpits and confession- 
als in Christendom, since Christmas 1842. 

And is not this better than caricaturing American 
knaveries, or lavishing your great gifts of fancy and ob- 
servation on Pecksnifl's, Dodgers, Bailleys, and Moulds. 
Nor is this a mere crotchet of mine, for nine-tenths of 
your readers, I am convinced, are of the same opinion; 
and, accordingly, I prophesy that you will sell three times 
as many of this moral and pathetic Carol as of your 
grotesque and fantastical Chuzzlewits. 

I hope you have not fancied that I think less frequently 
of you, or love you less, because I have not lately written 



^t. 73] FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY 65 

to you. Indeed, it is not so; but I have been poorly in 
health for the last five months, and advancing age makes 
me lazy and, perhaps, forgetful. But I do not forget my 
benefactors, and I owe too much to you not to have you 
constantly in my thoughts. I scarcely know a single in- 
dividual to whom I am indebted for so much pleasure, 
and the means, at least, of being made better. I wish 
you had not made such an onslaught on the Americans. 
Even if it were all merited, it does mischief, and no good. 
Besides, you know that there are many exceptions; and, 
if ten righteous might have saved a city once, there are 
surely innocent and amiable men and women, and be- 
sides boys and girls, enough in that vast region to arrest 
the proscription of a nation. I cannot but hope, there- 
fore, that you will relent, before you have done with them, 
and contrast your deep shadings with some redeeming 
touches. God bless you. I must not say more to-day. 
With most kind love to Mrs. Dickens, always very affec- 
tionately yours, &c. 

Since writing this in the morning, and just as I was 
going to seal it^ in comes another copy of the Carol, with 
a flattering autograph on the blank page, and an address 
in your own "fine Roman hand." I thank you with all 
my heart for this proof of your remembrance, and am 
pleased to think that, while I was so occupied about you, 
you had not been forgetful of me. Heaven bless you, and 
all that are dear to you. — Ever yours, &c. 



[^t. 73] 

To Mrs. Empson 
["a world to be loved"] 

Craigcrook, Sunday, 23d May, 1847. 
Bless you ever! and this is my first right earnest, tran- 
quil, Sunday blessing, since my return; for, the day after 
my arrival, I was in a worry with heaps of unanswered 
letters and neglected arrangements. But to-day I have 
got back to my old Sabbath feeling of peace, love, and 
seclusion. Granny has gone to church, and the babes 
and doggies are out walking; and I have paced leisurely 
round my garden, to the songs of hundreds of hymning 



66 FKANCIS LOKD JEFFREY [^t. 73 

blackbirds and thrushes, and stepped stately along my 
terrace, among' the bleaters in the lawn below, and pos- 
sessed my heart in quietness, and felt that there was 
sweetness in solitude, and that the world, whether to be 
left, or to be yet awhile lived in, is a world to be loved, 
and only to be enjoyed by those who find objects of love 
in it. And this is the sum of the matter; and the first 
and last and only enduring condition of all good people, 
when their fits of vanity and ambition are off them, or 
finally sinking to repose. Well, but here has been Tarley, 
come, of her own sweet will, to tell me, with a blush and 
a smile, and ever so little of a stammer, that she would 
like if I would walk with her; and we have been walk- 
ing, hand in hand, down to the bottom of the quarry, 
where the water is growing, though slowly, and up to the 
Keith's sweetbriar alley, very sweet and resonant with 
music of birds, and rich with cowslips and orchis; and 
over the style back to our domains; and been sitting in 
the warm corner by the gardener's house, and taking 
cognizance of the promise of gooseberries and currants, 
of which we are to have pies, I think, next week; and 
gazing at the glorious brightness of the gentians, and 
the rival brightness of the peacock's neck; and discours- 
ing of lambs and children, and goodness, and happiness, 
and their elements and connections. Less discussion, 
though, than usual, in our Sunday Tusculans, and more 
simple chat, as from one friend to another. And now 
she has gone to sharpen her teeth for dinner, and tell as 
much as she likes of our disceptations; and I come back 
to my letter. We met the boy and Ali early in our ramble, 
and he took my other hand for a while; but Ali would 
not trust him in the quarry, and so we parted — on the 
brink of perdition — and he roared lustily at sight of our 
peril. You beat us terribly as to weather still; for last 
night was positively cold with us, ther. at midnight down 
to 44, and a keen, clear, sharp-looking sky. To-day it has 
not yet been above 50, and there are but scanty sun- 
gleams. All which forbodes, if it does not ensure, a late 
harvest, which will this year be as great a calamity as a 
scanty one, which it is likely enough to be also. I fear 
the most of the mortality from famine; and pestilence 
is still to come even for this year; and it is too painful 



^t. 33] KOBEET SOUTHEY 67 

to think of. I persist in my early rising, and am down 
at breakfast every morning at 9^2 ; so that you had 
better be putting yourselves in training, if you mean, as 
I hope you do, to join with me in the rites of that na- 
tional meal. I rather think, too, that I am better than 
my average at Shanklin; though I do not ascribe this 
either to those virtuous exertions, or the sanitary influ- 
ence of my court work, and should be at a loss, indeed, 
to point out any specific amendment. .... 



[^t.33] KOBEET SOUTHEY 

1774-1843 

To Joseph Cottle 

[a "dear old friend and benefactor"] 

Greta Hall, April 20, 1808". 
My dear Cottle, 

On opening a box to-day, the contents of which I had 
not seen since the winter of 1799, your picture made its 
appearance. Of all Eobert Hancock's performances it is 
infinitely the best. I cannot conceive a happier likeness. 
I have been thinking of you and of old times ever since 
it came to light. I have been reading your Eall of Cam- 
bria, and in the little interval that remains before supper 
must talk to you in reply to your letter. 

What you say of my copyrights afi"ected me very much. 
Dear Cottle, set your heart at rest pn that subject. It 
ought to be at rest. These were yours, fairly bought, and 
fairly sold. You bought them on the chance of their 
success, which no London book-seller would have done; 
and had they not been bought, they could not have been 
published at all. Nay, if you had not purchased Joan of 
Arc, the poem never would have existed, nor should I, in 
all probability, ever have obtained that reputation which 
is the capital on which I subsist, nor that power which 
enables me to support it. 

But this is not all. Do you suppose, Cottle, that I have 
forgotten those true and most essential acts of friendship 
which you showed me when I stood most in need of them ? 
Your house was my house when I had no other. The very 
money with which I bought my wedding-ring and paid 



68 ROBEKT SOUTHEY [^t. 45 

my marriage fees, was supplied by you. It was with your 
sisters I left Edith during my six months' absence, and 
for the six months after my return it was from you that 
I received, week by week, the little on which we lived, 
till I was enabled to live by other means. It is not the 
settling of a cash account that can cancel obligations 
like these. You are in the habit of preserving your let- 
ters, and if you were not, I would entreat you to preserve 
this, that it might be seen hereafter. Sure I am, there 
never was a more generous or a kinder heart than yours; 
and you will believe me when I add, that there does not 
live that man upon earth whom I remember with more 
gratitude and more affection. My head throbs and my 
eyes burn with these recollections. Good night! my dear 
old friend and benefactor. 

E. S. 

[^t. 45] 

To Bertha^ Kate, and Isabel Southey 
[on being "ell-ell-deed"] 

June 26, 1820. 

Bertha, Kate, and Isabel, you have been very good 
girls, and have written me very nice letters, with which 
I was much pleased. This is the last letter which I can 
write in return; and as I happen to have a quiet hour to 
myself, here at Streatham, on Monday noon, I will em- 
ploy that hour in relating to you the whole history and 
manner of my being ell-ell-deed at Oxford by the Vice- 
Chancellor. 

You must know, then, that because I had written a 
great many good books, and more especially the Life of 
Wesley, it was made known to me by the Vice-Chancellor, 
through Mr. Heber, that the University of Oxford were 
desirous of showing me the only mark of honour in their 
power to bestow, which was that of making me an LL.D., 
that is to say, a doctor of laws. 

Now, you are to know that some persons are ell-ell-deed 
every year at Oxford, at the great annual meeting which 
is called the Commemoration. There are two reasons for 
this; first, that the university may do itself honour, by 
bringing persons of distinction to receive the degree pub- 



^t. 45] ROBERT SOUTHEY 69 

licly as a mark of honour; and, secondly, that certain 
persons in inferior offices may share in the fees paid by 
those upon whom the ceremony of ell-ell-deeing is per- 
formed. For the first of these reasons the Emperor Alex- 
ander was made a Doctor of Laws at Oxford, the King of 
Prussia, and old Blucher, and Platoff. And for the sec- 
ond, the same degree is conferred upon noblemen, and 
persons of fortune and consideration who are any ways 
connected with the university, or city, or county of 
Oxford. 

The ceremony of ell-ell-deeing is performed in a large 
circular building called the theatre, of which I will show 
you a print when I return, and this theatre is filled with 
people. The undergraduates (that is, the young men who 
are called Cathedrals at Keswick) entirely fill the gallery. 
Under the gallery there are seats, which are filled with 
ladies in full dress, separated from the gentlemen. Be- 
tween these two divisions of the ladies are seats for the 
heads of houses, and the doctors of law, physic, and 
divinity. In the middle of these seats is the Yice-Chan- 
cellor, opposite the entrance which is under the orchestra. 
On the right and left are two kind of pulpits, from which 
the prize essays and poems are recited. The area, or 
middle of the theatre, is filled with bachelors and masters 
of arts, and with as many strangers as can obtain ad- 
mission. Before the steps which lead up to the seats of 
the doctors, and directly in front of the Vice-Chancellor, 
a wooden bar is let down, covered with red cloth, .and on 
each side of this the beadles stand in their robes. 

When the theatre is full, the Vice-Chancellor, and the 
heads of houses, and the doctors enter: those persons who 
are to be ell-ell-deed remain without in the divinity 
schools, in their robes, till the convocation have signified 
their assent to the ell-ell-deeing, and then they are led 
into the theatre, one after another in a line, into the 
middle of the area, the people just making a lane for 
them. The professor of civil law, Dr. Phillimore, went 
before, and made a long speech in Latin, telling the Vice- 
Chancellor and the dignissimi doctores what excellent 
persons we were who were now to be ell-ell-deed. Then 
he took us one by one by the hand, and presented each 
in his turn, pronouncing his name aloud, saying who and 



70 EOBEET SOUTHEY [^t. 61 

what he was, and calling him many laudatory names 
ending in issimus. The audience then cheered loudly to 
show their approbation of the person ; the Vice-Chancellor 
stood up, and repeating the first words in issime, ell-ell- 
deed him; the beadles lifted up the bar of separation, and 
the new-made doctor went up the steps and took his seat 
among the dignissimi doctores. 

Oh Bertha, Kate, and Isabel, if you had seen me that 
day! I was like other issimis, dressed in a great robe of 
the finest scarlet cloth, with sleeves of rose-coloured silk, 
and I had in my hand a black velvet cap like a beef- 
eater, for the use of which dress I paid one guinea for 
that day. Dr. Phillimore, who was an old school-fellow 
of mine, and a very good man, took me by the hand in 
my turn, and presented mie ; upon which there was a great 
clapping of hands and huzzaing at my name. When that 
was over, the Vice-Chancellor stood up, and said these 
words whereby I was ell-ell-deed: — "Doctissime et orna- 
tissime vir, ego, pro auctoritate mea et totius universitatis 
hujus, admitto te ad gradum doctoris in jure civili, honoris 
causa." These were the words which ell-ell-deed me; and 
then the bar was lifted up, and I seated myself among 
the doctors. 

Little girls, you know it might be proper for me, now, 
to wear a large wig, and to be called Doctor Southey, 
and to become very severe, and leave oif being a comical 
papa. And if you should find that ell-ell-deeing has made 
this difference in me you will not be surprised. However, 
I shall not come down in a wig, neither shall I wear my 
robes at home. 

God bless you all! 

Your affectionate Father, 

K. Southey. 
[^t. 61] 

To Edward Moxon 

[recollections of CHARLES LAMb] 

Keswick, Feb. 2, 1836. 
My dear Sir, — 

I have been too closely engaged in clearing off the 
second volume of Cowper to reply to your inquiries con- 
cerning poor Lamb sooner. His acquaintance with Cole- 



^t. 61] EOBEET SOUTHEY 71 

ridge began at Christ's Hospital; Lamb was some two 
years, I think, his junior. Whether he was ever one of 
the Grecians there, might be ascertained, I suppose, by 
inquiring. My own impression is, that he was not. Cole- 
ridge introduced me to him in the winter of 1794-5, and 
to George Dyer also, from whom, if his memory has not 
failed, you might probably learn more of Lamb's early 
history than from any other person. Lloyd, Wordsworth, 
and Hazlitt became known to him through their connec- 
tion with Coleridge. 

When I saw the family (one evening only, and at that 
time), they were lodging somewhere near Lincoln's Inn, 
on the western side (I forget the street), and were evi- 
dently in uncomfortable circumstances. The father and 
mother were both living; and I have some dim recollection 
of the latter's invalid appearance. The father's senses 
had failed him before that time. He published some 
poems in quarto. Lamb showed me once an imperfect 
copy: the Sparrow's Wedding was the title of the longest 
piece, and this was the author's favourite; he liked, in 
his dotage, to hear Charles read it. 

His most familiar friend, when I first saw him, was 
White, who held some office at Christ's Hospital, and con- 
tinued intimate with him as long as he lived. You know 
what Elia says of him. He and Lamb were joint authors 
of the Original Letters of Falstaff. Lamb, I believe, first 
appeared as an author in the second edition of Coleridge's 
Poems (Bristol, 1797), and, secondly, in the little volume 
of blank verse with Lloyd (1798). Lamb, Lloyd, and 
White were inseparable in 1798; the two latter at one 
time lodged together, though no two men could be im- 
agined more unlike each other. Lloyd had no drollery 
in his nature; White seemed to have nothing else. You 
will easily understand how Lamb could sympathise with 
both. 

Lloyd, who used to form sudden friendships, was all 
but a stranger to me, when unexpectedly he brought Lamb 
down to visit me at a little village (Burton) near Christ 
Church, in Hampshire, where I was lodging in a very 
humble cottage. This was in the summer of 1797, and 
then, or in the following year, my correspondence with 
Lamb began. I saw more of him in 1802 than at any 



72 EGBERT SOUTHEY [^t. 61 

other time, for I was then six months resident in London. 
His visit to this country was before I came to it; it 
must have been either in that or the following year: it 
was to Lloyd and to Coleridge. 

I had forgotten one of his school-fellows, who is still 
living — C. V. Le Grice, a clergyman at or near Penzance. 
From him you might learn something of his boyhood. 

Cottle has a good likeness of Lamb, in chalk, taken by 
an artist named Robert Hancock, about the year 1798. 
It looks older than Lamb was at that time; but he was 
old-looking. 

Coleridge introduced him to Godwin, shortly after the 
first number of the Anti-Jacobin Magazine and Review 
was published, with a caricature of Gillray's, in which 
Coleridge and I were introduced with asses's heads, and 
Lloyd and Lamb as toad and frog. Lamb got warmed 
with whatever was on the table, became disputatious, and 
said things to Godwin which made him quietly say, "Pray, 
Mr. Lamb, are you toad or frog?" Mrs. Coleridge will 
remember the scene, which was to her sufficiently uncom- 
fortable. But the next morning S.T.C. called on Lamb, 
and found Godwin breakfasting with him, from which 
time their intimacy began. 

His angry letter to me in the Magazine arose out of a 
notion that an expression of mine in the Quarterly 
Review would hurt the sale of Elia; some one, no doubt, 
had said that it would. I meant to serve the book, and 
very well remember how the offence happened. I had 
written that it wanted nothing to render it altogether 
delightful but a saner religious feeling. This would have 
been the proper word if any other person had written the 
book. Feeling its extreme unfitness as soon as it was 
written_, I altered it immediately for the first word which ^ 
came into my head, intending to re-model the sentence 
when it should come to me in the proof; and that proof 
never came. There can be no objection to your printing 
all that passed upon the occasion, beginning with the 
passage in the Quarterly Review, and giving his letter. 

I have heard Coleridge say that, in a fit of derange- 
ment. Lamb fancied himself to be young Nerval. He told 
me this in relation to one of his poems. 

If you print my lines to him upon his Album Verses, 



^t. 64] WALTEK SAVAGE LANDOK 73 

I will send you a corrected copy. You received his letters, 
I trust, which Cuthbert took with him to town in Octo- 
ber. I wish they had been more, and wish, also, that I 
had more to tell you concerning him, and what I have 
told were of more value. But it is from such fragments 
of recollection, and such imperfect notices, that the mate- 
rials for biography must, for the most part, be collected. 

Yours very truly, 

Robert Southey. 



[Mi. 64.] WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 

1775-1864 

To Miss Rose Paynter 

[a dog with pluck] 

[Bath, September 23, 1839.] 
Dear Rose, — 

It is true enough that you have not heard from me for 
a long time; and the reason is not that I am idle, which 
I am, but because I hoped, from the long absence of all 
letters from Passy, that you surely were on your way to 
Bath. Otherwise not only should I have written, but 
have been, long ere this time, in Devonshire. Tell Mama 
that I might safely have been entrusted with the tapis, or, 
even with everything sur le tapis. There is no commis- 
sion of hers which I would not have executed, at least 
carefully. I am indeed quite as idle as usual. 

1 never sprain, 

Dear Rose! my brain; 

And if I did, 

The Lord forbid 
That you should set it strait again: 

For I have seen, 

O haughty Queen! 

The tears and sighs 

That fall and rise 
Where your ungentle hand hath been. 

No wonder you ask me whether you are not most 
barbarous: I will answer for it you are. I scarcely know 
any man but myself who is out of your martyrology. I 



74 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR [^t. 64 

am like one of the Saints (no doubt of that — ^you will 
say) I mean I am like one of those who look quietly on 
and take delight in seeing the most beautiful of the 
Creation execute the Creator's will. But I do not approve 
of your making more people mad and desperate. 

By the by, I met Sir Dudley Hill in town. He told me 
the wonderful news that a relation of his (the name too 
great to be communicated to me) was an admirer of 
yours. Never say, after this, that we acquire but little 
information in the great world. Speaking of Bath, you 
say — "for the short time we shall remain there." This 
disquiets me. Is it not too much to lose oiie of your 
family? But there is good cause shown; and when the 
same good cause is shown again, we must submit — more 
than submit — give up one half of the heart to gladness, 
while the other half is devoured by grief. 

If your family is really to continue but a little while 
in Bath pray let me know it. I have not been very 
importunate in my entreaties to hear often from you; 
for the pleasures of those I love have always been and 
always will be the highest of my gratifications; and I 
do not ask you now to shorten a ride or a walk or a 
conversation, but, at any moment, when you really have 
nothing else to do or to think about, tell me if my delight- 
ful evenings in Gt. Bedford Street are soon to close. I 
sadly fear your wishes in regard to the picture are ex- 
pressed too late. But I will write by this very post and 
signify them. The "Book of Beauty" is always sent to 
America by the first of October. To-morrow I will set out 
for Torquay, and return by the middle of the next month. 

If Mrs. Paynter thinks I can do anything in the deco- 
ration of her house, better than the servant, I will return 
sooner and try my hand at it. Your account of Sophy 
has removed from me a heavy load of anxiety. That 
horrible pleurisy frightened me. I can bear pain passa- 
bly well myself: it is only when it rebounds from my 
friends that I have not the courage to face it. You 
would have laught at me the other day when a lady 
was my protectress. I was over at Marston to see the 
Boyles when (tell the Admiral if he is with you) I deliv- 
ered his message to Sir Courtney. In the courtyard was 
a magnificent black Newfoundland dog. No sooner I had 



^t. 68] WALTEK SAVAGE LANDOK 75 

entered the gate than, before I could deliver my creden- 
tials, or make the sign of dog-freemasonry, he seized my 
leg. A swinging box on the ear was opposed to this 
manoeuvre. My Newfoundlander had what the boxers (not 
very elegantly) call pluck. He renewed the attack, de- 
spite some severe appellations and admirable parasol- 
thrusts of Miss Boyle. However she conquered him — 
for neither my box on the ear nor a kick at the second 
round, which sent him upon his back, made him give in. 
We were pretty good friends at last, although I told him 
I should trouble him, at his leisure, just to look over a 
certain article in my tailor's bill, which might as well 
be transferred to his account. Fred will think this rare 
fun — for several minutes it was rather serious. I would 
have declined the combat and have left my enemy alone 
with his glory had there been any escape. 
Believe me, dear Rose, 

Yours very affectionately, 

W. S. Landor. 
[^t. 68] 

To THE Editor of the "Examiner" 
[a "polygonal character"] 

August 17, 1843. 
Sir, — 

The prosecution with which you are threatened by 
Lord Brougham might well be expected from every facette 
of his polygonal character. He began his literary and 
political life with a scanty store of many small commodi- 
ties. Long after he set out, the witty and wise Lord 
Stowell said of him, that he wanted only a little law to 
fill up the vacancy. His shoulders were not over-burdened 
by the well-padded pack he bore on them; and he found 
a ready sale, where such articles find the readiest, in 
the to^Ti of Edinburgh. "Here he entered into a confed- 
eracy (the word conspiracy may be libellous) to defend 
the worst atrocities of the French, and to cry down every 
author to whom England was dear and venerable. A 
better spirit now prevails in the Ediiiburgh Review, from 
the generosity and genius of Macaulay. But in the days 
when Brougham and his confederates were writers in it, 
more falsehood and more malignity marked its pages than 



76 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR [^t. 68 

any other Journal in the language. And here is the 
man who cries out he is wounded! the recreant who, 
screaming for help, aims a poisoned dagger at the vigor- 
ous breast that crushes him to the ground. 

Had he no respect for the tenets by which he made his 
fortune? Has he none for a superiority of intellectual 
power which leaves to him superiority of station? This 
eminently bad writer and reasoner brings an action for 
slander on many counts, at the summit of which is "be- 
cause it is despicable." Now did ever man or cat fly at 
the eyes for a thing beneath his notice: and such is the 
meaning of despicable among us who have learnt Latin 
and who write English. What other man within the walls 
of Parliament, however hasty, rude, and petulant, hath 
exhibited such manifold instances of bad manners, bad 
feelings, bad reasonings, bad language, and bad law? 
They who cannot be what they want to be, resolve on 
notoriety in any shape whatever. Each House exhibits a 
specimen of this genus, pinned to the last pages of its 
Journals. Such notoriety can in no manner be more 
readily attained than by suddenly turning round on one 
leg, showing how agile is old age in this step, and then 
appealing to you whether the Terpsichoris has ever 
changed countenance or colour, from youth upwards. 
Meanwhile the toothless jaws are dropping, on both sides, 
the slaver of wrath and dotage. 

How many things are published with impunity which 
are more injurious to a man's character, more detrimental 
to his fortune and interest, than a great proportion of 
those which the law calls libellous! Suppose an author, 
who has devoted his whole life to some particular study, 
writes a book upon it; suppose it is in any manner dis- 
pleasing to Lord Brougham, whether on its own account 
or the author's; would he hesitate, has he ever hesitated, 
to inflict an irremediable wound? Dexterity in mis- 
chief is applauded; the sufferer is derided. Easily may 
a weaker, who watches the opportunity, trip up a stronger. 
Similar feats are the peculiar gratification of coarse and 
vulgar minds. Has no virtuous man of genius bled to 
death under the scourge of such a critic as Brougham? 
Years of application, if years were yet allowed him, 
would be insufficient to place him in the festive seat. 



^t. 68] WALTEE SAVAGE LANDOK 77 

which a crueller hand than a murderer's made vacant. 
On the contrary, the accusations brought against Lord 
Brougham, by the Examiner, could be shown by his 
Lordship to be true or false within a single hour, and 
the fact be rendered apparent to the whole nation before 
nightfall. But here no yindictiv© spirit can exert its 
agency: no lightning of phosphorous runs along the 
benches of the Lords; no thunder as awful shakes the 
woolsack. 

Wavering as he is by habit, malicious as he is by na- 
ture, it is evident that Lord Brougham says and does the 
greater part of his sayings and doings for no other pur- 
pose than to display his ability in defending them. He 
dazzles us by no lights of eloquence, he attracts us by 
not even a fictitious flue-warmth; but he perplexes and 
makes us stare and stumble by his angular intricacies 
and sudden glares. Not a sentence of his speeches or 
writings will be deposited in the memory as rich or rare; 
and even what is strange will be cast out of it for what 
is stranger, until this goes too. Is there a housewife 
who keeps a cupboardful of cups without handle or 
bottom; a selection of brokages and flaws? 

I am. Sir, &c., 

W. S. Landor. 
[^t. 68] 

To Miss Kose Paynter 
["'even the old ones do not dream of death"] 

Bath, September 21st, [1843]. 
Dear Rose, — 

... It delights me to know that you have been so well 
amused in Lancashire. You did right in not killing the 
grouse. Let men do these things if they will. Perhaps 
there is no harm in it — perhaps it makes them no crueller 
than they would be otherwise. But it is hard to take 
away what we cannot give — and life is a pleasant thing — 
at least to birds. 'No doubt the young ones say tender 
things to one another, and even the old ones do not dream 
of death. Talking of old ones, I come naturally to say 
a little of myself. I am an absolute cripple with the 
rheumatism. Perhaps a gallop round Doncaster race- 
course would do me good, but I doubt my elasticity in 



78 CHAELES LAMB [^t. 24 

springing to the saddle. I thought old age a fable until 
now: I now find it a serious and sad calamity. 

It is no wonder to me that you were enchanted with 
York Cathedral. Whatever is excellent raises your ad- 
miration and enthusiasm. In how deplorable a state was 
architecture throughout the whole of Europe, until these 
last thirty years, ever since the death of Wren. And he 
undervalued and misunderstood the marvels of the Gothic. 
I can hardly imagine that even the Athenians heard such 
music in their chaste and beautiful temples as you heard 
in the Cathedral at York. . . . 

Mrs. tells me she and her family went over to 

Weston Super Mare. Of all the places on the earth or 
the waters, this is surely the most muddy and miser- 
able. She found it so, although her voyage was not made 
in search of the picturesque. I have no other Bath news 
to offer you. I have exhausted my genius in the long 
letter I wrote to Mrs. Paynter this morning. Luckily 
she asked me for two Examiners. The best of me was 
in them. If you happen to receive them do not think me 
spiteful because I am severe. It devolved on me to 
punish two * evil-doers. I was called to it by many loud 
voices, and some of them from afar. I do confess to an 
intolerance of baseness, but I am very tolerant of the most 
adverse opinions on all subjects whatsoever. 
Believe me, dear Rose, 
Ever affectionately yours, 

W. S. Landor. 

[^t.24] CHARLES LAMB 

1775-1834 
To Robert Southey 
["poor earth-born companions"] 

March 20th, 1799. 
[Dear Southey, — ] 

I am hugely pleased with your "Spider," f ''your old 
freemason," as you call him. The first three stanzas are 
delicious; they seem to me a compound of Burns and 

* One of them was Brougham. See preceding letter. 
1[The Spider. Written at Westbury in 1798. 



^t. 24] CHARLES LAMB 79 

Old Quarles, the kind of home-strokes, where more is 
felt than strikes the ear; a terseness, a jocular pathos, 
which makes one feel in laughter. The measure, too, is 
novel and pleasing. I could almost wonder Robert Burns 
in his lifetime never stumbled upon it. The fourth 
stanza is less striking, as being less original. The fifth 
falls off. It has no felicity of phrase, no old-fashioned 
phrase or feeling. 

"Young hopes, and love's delightful dreams," 

savour neither of Bums nor Quarles; they seem more 
like shreds of many a modern sentimental sonnet. The 
last stanza hath nothing striking in it, if I except the 
two concluding lines, which are Burns all over. I wish, 
if you concur with me, these things could be looked to. 
I am sure this is a kind of writing, which comes ten-fold 
better recommended to the heart, comes there more like 
a neighbour or familiar, than thousands of Hamnels, 
and Zillahs, and Madelons. I beg you will send me the 
"Holly Tree," if it at all resemble this, for it must 
please me. I have never seen it. I love this sort of 
poems, that open a new intercourse with the most de- 
spised of the animal and insect race. I think this vein 
may be further opened. Peter Pindar hath very prettily 
apostrophized a fly; Burns hath his mouse and his louse; 
Coleridge less successfully hath made overtures of inti- 
macy to a jackass, therein only following, at unresem- 
bling distance, Sterne, and greater Cervantes.^ Besides 
these, I know of no other examples of breaking down the 
partition between us and our "poor earth-born compan- 
ions." It is sometimes revolting to be put in a track of 
feeling by other people, not one's own immediate thoughts, 
else I would persuade you, if I could, (I am in earnest,) 
to commence a series of these animals' poems, which 
might have a tendency to rescue some poor creatures 
from the antipathy of mankind. Some thoughts came 
across me: for instance — to a rat, to a toad, to a cock- 
chafer, to a mole. People bake moles alive by a slow 
oven fire to cure consumption. Rats are, indeed, the most 
despised and contemptible parts of God's earth. I killed 
a rat the other day by punching him to pieces, and feel 



80 CHARLES LAMB [.^t. 24 

a weight of blood upon me to this hour. Toads you 
know are made to fly, and tumble down and crush all to 
pieces. Cockchafers are old sport. Then again to a 
worm, with an apostrophe to anglers, those patient tyrants, 
meek inflictors of pangs intolerable, cool devils ; to an owl ; 
to all snakes, with an apology for their poison ; to a cat in 
boots or bladders. Your own fancy, if it takes a fancy 
to these hints, will suggest many more. A series of such 
poems, suppose them accompanied with plates descriptive 
of animal torments, cooks roasting lobsters, fishmongers 
crimping skates, &c., &c,, would take excessively. I will 
willingly enter into a partnership in the plan with you. 
I think my heart and soul would go with it too — at least, 
give it a thought. My plan is but this minute come 
into my head; but it strikes me instantaneously as some- 
thing new, good, and useful, full of pleasure, and full 
of moral. If old Quarles and Wither could live again, 
we would invite them into our firm. Burns hath done 
his part. 

Poor Sam. Le Grice! I am afraid the world, and the 
camp, and the university, have spoilt him among them. 
'Tis certain he had at one time a strong capacity of 
turning out something better. I knew him, and that not 
long since, when he had a most warm heart. I am 
ashamed of the indifference I have sometimes felt towards 
him. I think the devil is in one's heart. I am under 
obligations to that man for the warmest friendship, and 
heartiest sympathy exprest both by word and deed and 
tears for me, when I was in my greatest distress. But I 
have forgot that! as, I fear, he has nigh forgot the 
awful scenes which were before his eyes when he served 
the office of a comforter to me. No service was too mean 
or troublesome for him to perform. I can't think what 
but the devil, "that old spider," could have sucked my 
heart so dry of its sense of all gratitude. If he does come 
in your way, Southey, fail not to tell him that I retain 
a most affectionate remembrance of his old friendliness, 
and an earnest wish to resume our intercourse. In this 
I am serious. I cannot recommend him to your society, 
because I am afraid whether he be quite worthy of it; 
but I have no right to dismiss him from my regard. He 
was at one time, and in the worst of times, my own 



Mt. 25] CHAELES LAMB 81 

familiar friend, and great comfort to me then. I have 
known him to play at cards with my father, meal-times 
excepted, literally all day long, in long days too, to save 
me from being teased by the old man, when I was not able 
to bear it. 

God bless him for it, and God bless you, Southey. 

C. L. 

[^t. 25] 

To Thomas Manning 
[an exhibition of snakes] 

Oct. 16th, 1800. 
Dear Manning, — 

Had you written one week before you did, I certainly 
should have obeyed your injunction; you should have seen 
me before my letter. I will explain to you my situation. 
There are six of us in one department. Two of us (within 
these four days) are confined with severe fevers; and two 
more, who belong to the Tower Militia, expect to have 
marching orders on Friday. Now six are absolutely nec- 
essary. I have already asked and obtained two young 
hands to supply the loss of the feverites, and, with the 
other prospect before me, you njay believe I cannot de- 
cently ask leave of absence for myself. All I can promise 
(and 1 do promise, with the sincerity of St. Peter, and 
the contrition of Sinner Peter if I fail) that I will 
come the very first spare week, and go nowhere till I have 
been at Cambridge. No matter if you are in a state of 
pupilage when I come; for I can employ myself in Cam- 
bridge very pleasantly in the mornings. Are there not 
libraries, halls, colleges, books, pictures, statues? I wish 
you had made London in your way. There is an exhibi- 
tion quite uncommon in Europe, which could not have 
escaped your genius, — a live rattlesnake, ten feet in length, 
and the thickness of a big leg. I went to see it last 
night by candle light. We were ushered into a room 
very little bigger than ours at Pentonville. A man and 
woman and four boys live in this room, joint tenants 
with nine snakes, most of them such as no remedy has 
been discovered for their bite. We walked into the middle, 
which is formed by a half-moon of wired boxes, all man- 



82 CHAKLES LAMB [^t. 25 

sions of snakes — whip-snakes, thunder-snakes, pig-nose- 
snakes, American vipers, and this monster. He lies 
curled up in folds. Immediately a stranger entered (for 
he is used to the family, and sees them play at cards,) 
he set up a rattle like a watchman's in London, or near 
as loud, and reared up a head, from the midst of these 
folds, like a toad, and shook his head, and showed every 
sign a snake can show of irritation. I had the foolish 
curiosity to strike the wires with my finger, and the 
devil flew at me with his toad-mouth wide open; the 
inside of his mouth is quite white. I had got my finger 
away, nor could he well have bit me with his big mouth, 
which would have been certain death in five minutes. 
But it frightened me so much, that I did not recover 
my voice for a minute's space. I forgot, in my fear, that 
he was secured. You would have forgot too, for 'tis 
incredible how such a monster can be confined in small 
gauzy-looking wires. I dreamed of snakes in the night. 
I wish to heaven you could see it. He absolutely swelled 
with passion to the bigness of a large thigh. I could not 
retreat without infringing on another box; and just be- 
hind, a little devil not an inch from my back had got his 
nose out, with some difficulty and pain, quite through the 
bars! He was soon taught better manners. All the 
snakes were curious, and objects of terror: but this mon- 
ster, like Aaron's serpent, swallowed up the impression 
of the rest. He opened his cursed mouth, when he made 
at me, as wide as his head was broad. I hallooed out 
quite loud, and felt pains all over my body with the 
fright. 

I have had the felicity of hearing George Dyer read 
out one book of the Farmer s Boy. I thought it rather 
childish. No doubt, there is originality in it, (which, in 
your self-taught geniuses, is a most rare quality, they gen- 
erally getting hold of some bad models, in a scarcity of 
books, and forming their taste on them,) but no selection. 
All is described. 

Mind, I have only heard read one book. 
Yours sincerely, 

Philo-Snake, 

C. L. 



^t. 25] CHARLES LAMB 83 

[^t. 25] 

To William Wordsworth 

[LONDON AND THE LAKE COUNTRY] 

Jan. 30th, 1801. 
[Dear Wordsivorth, — ] 

I ought before this to have replied to your very kind 
invitation into Cumberland. With you and your sister 
I could gang anywhere; but I am afraid whether I shall 
ever be able to afford so desperate a journey. Separate 
from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I 
never see a mountain in my life. I have passed all my days 
in London, until I have formed as many and intense local 
attachments as any of you mountaineers can have done 
with dead Nature. The lighted shops of the Strand 
and Fleet Street; the innumerable trades, tradesmen, and 
customers, coaches, waggons, playhouses; all the bustle 
and wickedness round about Covent Garden; the very 
women of the Town; the watchman, drunken scenes, rat- 
tles; life awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night; 
the impossibility of being dull in Fleet Street ; the crowds, 
the very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon houses and 
pavements, the print-shops, the old book-stalls, parsons 
cheapening books, coffee-houses, steams of soups from 
kitchens, the pantomimes — London itself a pantomime and 
a masquerade — all these things work themselves into my 
mind, and feed me, without a power of satiating me. 
The wonder of these sights impels me into night-walks 
about her crowded streets, and I often shed tears in the 
motley Strand from fulness of joy at so much life. All 
these emotions must be strange to you; so are your rural 
emotions to me. But consider, what must I have been 
doing all my life, not to have lent great portions of my 
heart with usury to such scenes ? 

My attachments are all local, purely local. I have no 
passion (or have had none since I was in love, and then 
it was the spurious engendering of poetry and books,) 
for groves and valleys. The rooms where I was bom, 
the furniture which has been before my eyes all my life, 
a book-case which has followed me about like a faithful 
dog, (only exceeding him in knowledge,) wherever I 
have moved, old chairs, old tables, streets, squares, where 



84 CHARLES LAMB [JEt. 26 

I have sunned myself, my old school, — ^these are my mis- 
tresses. Have I not enough, without your mountains? 
I do not envy you. I should pity you, did I not know- 
that the mind will make friends of any thing. Your 
sun, and moon, and skies, and hills, and lakes, affect me 
no more, or scarcely come to me in more venerable char- 
acters, than as a gilded room with tapestry and tapers, 
where I might live with handsome visible objects. I con- 
sider the clouds above me but as a roof beautifully 
painted, but unable to satisfy the mind: and at last, 
like the pictures of the apartment of a connoisseur, unable 
to afford him any longer a pleasure. So fading upon me, 
from disuse, have been the beauties of Nature, as they 
have been confinedly called; so ever fresh, and green, and 
warm are all the inventions of men, and assemblies of men 
in this great city. I should certainly have laughed with 
dear Joanna. 

Give my kindest love, and my sister's, to D. and your- 
self; and a kiss from me to little Barbara Lewthwaite. 
Thank you for liking my play.* 

C. L. 

[^t. 26] 

To Walter Wilson 
[an apology] 

August 14th, 1801. 
Dear Wilson, — 

I am extremely sorry that any serious differences should 
subsist between us, on account of some foolish behaviour 
of mine at Richmond; you knew me well enough before, 
that a very little liquor will cause a considerable altera- 
tion in me. 

I beg you to impute my conduct solely to that, and not 
to any deliberate intention of offending you, from whom 
I have received so many friendly attentions. I know 
that you think a very important difference in opinion 
with respect to some more serious subjects between us 
makes me a dangerous companion; but do not rashly 
infer, from some slight and light expressions which I 

* Perhaps the tone of the letter is somewhat affected by Wordsworth's 
indifference to the merits of John Woodvil. 



^t. 27] CHARLES LAMB 85 

may have made use of in a moment of levity, in your 
presence, without sufficient regard to your feelings — do 
not conclude that I am an inveterate enemy to all re- 
ligion. I have had a time of seriousness, and I have 
known the importance and reality of a religious belief. 
Latterly, I acknowledge, much of my seriousness has 
gone off, whether from new company, or some other 
new associations; but I still retain at bottom a conviction 
of the truth, and a certainty of the usefulaess of re- 
ligion. I will not pretend to more gravity of feeling than 
I at present possess; my intention is not to persuade 
you that any great alteration is prolBable in me; sudden 
converts are superficial and transitory; I only want you 
to believe that I have stamina of seriousness within me, 
and that I desire nothing more than a return of that 
friendly intercourse which used to subsist between us, 
but which my folly has suspended. 
Believe me, 

Very affectionately yours, 

C. Lamb. 
[^t. 27] 

To Thomas Manning 
[the lake country; coleridge] 

24th Sept., 1802, London. 
My dear Manning, — 

Since the date of my last letter I have been a traveller. 
A strong desire seized me of visiting remote regions. 
My first impulse was to go and see Paris. It was a 
trivial objection to my aspiring mind, that I did not 
understand a word of the language, since I certainly 
intend sometime in my life to see Paris, and equally 
certainly intend never to learn the language; therefore 
that could be no objection. However, I am very glad 
I did not go, because you had left Paris (I see) before I 
could have set out. I believe Stoddart promising to go 
with me another year, prevented that plan. My next 
scheme (for to my restless, ambitious mind London was 
become a bed of thorns) was to visit the far-famed peak 
in Derbyshire, where the Devil sits, they say, without 
breeches. This my purer mind rejected as indelicate. 
And my final resolve was, a tour to the Lakes. I set out 



86 CHAKLES LAMB [^t. 27 

with Mary to Keswick, without giving Coleridge any 
notice, for my time, being precious, did not admit of it. 
He received us with all the hospitality in the world, and 
gave up his time to show us all the wonders of the coun- 
try. He dwells upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, 
in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a 
net of mountains: great floundering bears and monsters 
they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We got in in the 
evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Penrith, in the 
midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which transmuted all the 
mountains into colours, purple, &c., &c. We thought we 
had got into fairy-land. But that went oif (as it never 
came again; while we stayed we had no more fine sun- 
sets;) and we entered Coleridge's comfortable study just 
in the dusk, when the mountains were all dark with 
clouds upon their heads. Such an impression I never 
received from objects of sight before, nor do I suppose I 
can ever again. Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skid- 
daw, &c., I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about that 
night, like an intrenchment ; gone to bed, as it seemed, 
for the night, but promising that ye were to be seen in 
the morning. Coleridge had got a blazing fire in his 
study; which is a large, antique, ill-shaped room, with 
an old-fashioned organ, never played upon, big enough 
for a church, shelves of scattered folios, an ^olian harp, 
and an old sofa, half bed, &c. And all looking out upon 
the last fading view of Skiddaw, and his broad-breasted 
brethren : what a night ! Here we stayed three full weeks, 
in which time I visited Wordsworth's cottage, where we 
stayed a day or two with the Clarksons, (good people, 
and most hospitable, at whose house we tarried one day 
and night,) and saw Lloyd. The Wordsworths were gone 
to Calais. They have since been in London, and past 
much time with us: he is now gone into Yorkshire to be 
married. So we have seen Keswick, Grasmere, Amble- 
side, Ills water, (where the Clarksons live,) and a place 
at the other end of Ulswater; I forget the name: to which 
we travelled on a very sultry day, over the middle of 
Helvellyn. We have clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, 
and I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In fine, I have 
satisfied myself that there is such a thing as that which 
tourists call romantic, which I very much suspected be- 



^t. 27] CHARLES LAMB 87 

fore: they make such a spluttering about it, and toss 
their splendid epithets around them, till they give as dim 
a light as at four o'clock next morning the lamps do 
after an illumination. Mary was excessively tired when 
she got about half-way up Skiddaw, but we came to a 
cold rill (than which nothing can be imagined more cold, 
running over cold stones,) and with the reinforcement of 
a draught of cold water she surmounted it most man- 
fully. Oh, its fine black head, and the bleak air atop of 
it, with a prospect of mountains all about and about, 
making you giddy; and then Scotland afar oif, and the 
border countries so famous in song and ballad! It was 
a day that will stand out, like a mountain, I am sure, in 
my life. But I am returned, (I have now been come 
home near three weeks; I was a month out,) and you 
cannot conceive the degradation I felt at first, from be- 
ing accustomed to wander free as air among mountains, 
and bathe in rivers without being controlled by anyone, 
to come home and work. I felt very little. I had been 
dreaming I was a very great man. But that is going oif, 
and I find I shall conform in time to that state of life 
to which it has pleased God to call me. Besides, after 
all, Fleet Street and the Strand are better places to live 
in for good and all than amidst Skiddaw. Still, I turn 
back to those great places where I wandered about, par- 
ticipating in their greatness. After all, I could not live 
in Skiddaw. I could spend a year, two, three years among 
them, but I must have a prospect of seeing Fleet Street 
at the end of that time, or I should mope and pine away, 
I know. Still, Skiddaw is a fine creature. My habits 
are changing, I think, i.e., from drunk to sober. Whether 
I shall be happy or not remains to be proved. I shall 
certainly be more happy in a morning; but whether I 
shall not sacrifice the fat, and the marrow, and the kid- 
neys, i.e., the night, glorious care-drowning night, that 
heals all our wrongs, pours wine into our mortifications, 
changes the scene from indifferent and flat to bright and 
brilliant! O Manning, if I should have formed a dia- 
bolical resolution, by the time you come to England, of 
not admitting any spiritous liquors into my house, will 
you be my guest on such shameworthy terms? Is life, 
with such limitations, worth trying? The truth is, that 



88 CHAELES LAMB [^t. 30 

my liquors bring a nest of friendly harpies about my 
house, who consume me. This is a pitiful tale to be read 
at St. Gothard, but it is just now nearest my heart. Fen- 
wick is a ruined man. He is hiding himself from his 
creditors, and has sent his wife and children into the 
country. Fell, my other drunken companion, (that has 
been: nam hie coestus artemque repono,) is turned editor 
of a Naval Chronicle. Godwin continues a steady friend, 
though the same facility does not remain of visiting him 

often. That has detached Marshall from his 

house; Marshall, the man who went to sleep when the 
^'Ancient Mariner" was reading; the old, steady, unalter- 
able friend of the Professor. Holcroft is not yet come 
to town. I expect to see him, and will deliver your mes- 
sage. Things come crowding in to say, and no room for 
'em. Some things are too little to be told, i.e., to have a 
preference; some are too big and circumstantial. Thanks 
for yours, which was most delicious. Would I had been 
with you, benighted, &c. ! I fear my head is turned with 
wandering. I shall never be the same acquiescent being. 
Farewell. Write again quickly, for I shall not like to 
hazard a letter, not knowing where the fates have carried 
you. Farewell, my dear fellow. 

C. Lamb. 

[^t. 30] 

To William and Dorothy Wordsworth 
[the ''farewell to tobacco"] 

Sept. 28th, 1805. 

My dear Wordsworth, (or Dorothy rather, for to you 
appertains the biggest part of this answer by right,) I 
will not again deserve reproach by so long a silence. I 
have kept deluding myself with the idea that Mary would 
write to you, but she is so lazy, (or, which I believe is 
the true state of the case, so diffident,) that it must re- 
vert to me as usual. Though she writes a pretty good 
style, and has some notion of the force of words, she is 
not always so certain of the true orthography of them: 
and that, and a poor handwriting (in this age of female 
calligraphy), often deters her, where no other reason does. 

We have neither of us been very well for some weeks 



^t. 30] CHAELES LAMB 89 

past. I am very nervous, and she most so at those times 
when I am; so that a merry friend, adverting to the noble 
consolation we were able to afford each other, denominated 
US, not unaptly, Gum-Boil and Tooth-Ache, for they used 
to say that a gum-boil is a great relief to a tooth-ache. 

We have been two tiny excursions this Summer, for 
three or four days each, to a place near Harrow, and to 
Egham, where Cooper's Hill is: and that is the total his- 
tory of our rustications this year. Alas! how poor a 
round to Skiddaw and Helvellyn, and Borrowdale, and 
the magnificent sesquipedalia of the year 1802 ! Poor old 
Molly ! to have lost her pride, that "last infirmity of noble 
minds," and her cow. Fate need not have set her wits to 
such an old Molly. I am heartily sorry for her. Kemem- 
ber us lovingly to her; and in particular remember us to 
Mrs. Clarkson in the most kind manner. 

I hope, by "southwards," you mean that she will be at 
or near London, for she is a great favourite of both of 
us, and we feel for her health as much as [is] possible for 
any one to do. She is one of the friendliest, comfortablest 
women we know, and made our little stay at your cottage 
one of the pleasantest times we ever past. We were quite 
strangers to her. Mr. C. is with you too; our kindest 
separate remembrances to him. As to our special affairs, 
I am looking about me. I have done nothing since the 
beginning of last year, when I lost my newspaper job; 
and having had a long idleness, I must do something or 
we shall get very poor. Sometimes I think of a farce, but 
hitherto all schemes have gone off; an idle brag or two 
of an evening, vapouring out of a pipe, and going off in 
the morning; but now I have bid farewell to my "sweet 
enemy," Tobacco, I shall perhaps set nobly to work. Hang 
work! 

I wish that all the year were holiday; I am sure that 
indolence — indefeasible indolence — is the true state of 
man, and business the invention of the old Teazer, whose 
interference doomed Adam to an apron and set him a 
hoeing. Pen and ink, and clerks and desks, were the re- 
finements of this old torturer some thousand years after, 
under pretence of "Commerce allying distant shores, pro- 
moting and diffusing knowledge, good," &c., &c. 

I wish you may think this a handsome farewell to my 



90 CHARLES LAMB [vEt. 30 

"Friendly Traitress." Tobacco has been my evening com- 
fort and my morning curse for these five years; and you 
know how difficult it is from refraining to pick one's lips 
even, when it has become a habit. This poem is the only 
one which I have finished since so long as when I wrote 
"Hester Savory." I have had it in my head to do it these 
two years, but tobacco stood in its own light when it gave 
me headaches that prevented my singing its praises. Now 
you have got it, you have got all my store, for I have 
absolutely not another line. No more has Mary. We 
have nobody about us that cares for poetry; and who will 
rear grapes when he shall be the sole eater? Perhaps if 
you encourage us to show you what we may write, we may 
do something now and then before we absolutely forget 
the quantity of an English line for want of practice. The 
"Tobacco," being a little in the way of Withers (whom 
Southey so much likes), perhaps you will somehow con- 
vey it to him with my kind remembrances. Then every- 
body will have seen it that I wish to see it. I have sent it 
to Malta. 

I remain, dear W. and D., yours truly, 

C. Lamb. 

[^t. 30] 

To Thomas Manning 
["pearls of extraordinary magnitude"] 

[Nov. 15, 1805.] 
Dear Manning, — 

Certainly you could not have called at all hours from 
two till ten, for we have been only out of an evening Mon- 
day and Tuesday in this week. But if you think you 
have, your thought shall go for the deed. We did pray 
for you on Wednesday night. Oysters unusually luscious ; 
pearls of extraordinary magnitude found in them. I have 
made bracelets of them ; given them in clusters to ladies. 
Last night we went out in despite, because you were not 
come at your hour. 

This night we shall be at home; so shall we certainly, 
both, on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. 
Take your choice, mind I don't say of one: but choose 
which evening you will not come, and come the other 



^t. 31] CHAKLES LAMB 91 

four. Doors open at five o'clock. Shells forced about 
nine. Every gentleman smokes or not as he pleases. 

C. L. 

[^t. 31] 

To William Wordsworth 

[Mr. H. ] 

December 11th, 1806. 

Maiy's love to all of you — I wouldn't let her write. 
Dear Wordsworth, — 

Mr. H. came out last night, and failed. I had many 
fears; the subject was not substantial enough. John Bull 
must have solider fare than a letter. We are pretty stout 
about it; have had plenty of condoling friends; but, after 
all, we had rather it should have succeeded. You will see 
the prologue in most of the morning papers. It was re- 
ceived with such shouts as I never witnessed to a prologue. 
It was attempted to be encored. How hard ! — a thing I 
did merely as a task, because it was wanted, and set no 
great store by; and Mr. H.U The number of friends we 
had in the house — my brother and I being in public of- 
fices, &c. — was astonishing, but they yielded at length to 
a few hisses. 

A hundred hisses! (Damn the word, I write it like 
kisses — how different!) — a hundred hisses outweigh a 
thousand claps. The former come more directly from 
the heart. Well, 'tis withdrawn, and there is an end. 

Better luck to us. 

C. Lamb. 

(Turn over.) 

P. S. Pray, when any of you write to the Clarksons, 
give our kind loves, and say we shall not be able to come 
and see them at Christmas, as I shall have but a day or 
two, and tell them we bear our mortification pretty well. 



92 CHARLES LAMB [^t. 40 

[^t. 40] 

To Miss Hutchinson 
[illness of his sister] 

Thursday, 19th Oct., 1815. 
Dear Miss H., — 

I am forced to be the replier to your letter, for Mary * 
has been ill, and gone from home these five weeks yester- 
day. She has left me very lonely and very miserable. I 
stroll about, but there is no rest but at one's own fireside, 
and there is no rest for me there now. I look forward to 
the worse half being past, and keep up as well as I can. 
She has begun to show some favourable symptoms. The 
return of her disorder has been frightfully soon this time, 
with scarce a six months' interval. I am almost afraid 
my worry of spirits about the E. I. House was partly the 
cause of her illness, but one always imputes it to the 
cause next at hand; more probably it comes from some 
cause we have no control over or conjecture of. It cuts 
sad great slices out of the time, the little time, we shall 
have to live together. I don't know but the recurrence 
of these illnesses might help me to sustain her death bet- 
ter than if we had had no partial separations. But I 
won't talk of death. I will imagine us immortal, or for- 
get that we are otherwise. By God's blessing, in a few 
weeks we may be making our meal together, or sitting 
in the front row of the Pit at Drury Lane, or taking our 
evening walk past the theatres, to look at the outside of 
them, at least, if not to be tempted in. Then we forget 
we are assailable; we are strong for the time as rocks; — 
"the wind is tempered to the shorn Lambs." Poor C. 
Lloyd, and poor Priscilla! I feel I hardly feel enough 
for him; my own calamities press about me, and involve 
me in a thick integument not to be reached at by other 
folks' misfortunes. But I feel all I can — all the kindness 
I can, towards you all — God bless you! I hear nothing 
from Coleridge. 

Yours truly, 

C. Lamb. 

* For letters by Mary Lamb, see pp. 124-128. 



.^t. 40] CHARLES LAMB 93 

[^t. 40] 

To Thomas Manning 
[an imaginary flight of time] 

Dec. 25tli, 1815. 
Dear old friend and absentee, — 

This is Christmas Day 1815 with us; what it may be 
with you I don't know, the 12th of June next year per- 
haps; and if it should be the consecrated season with you, 
I don't see how you can keep it. You have no turkeys; 
you would not desecrate the festival by offering up a with- 
ered Chinese Bantam, instead of the savoury grand Nor- 
folcian holocaust, that smokes all around my nostrils at 
this moment from a thousand firesides. Then what pud- 
dings have you? Where will you get holly to stick in 
your churches, or churches to stick your dried tea-leaves 
(that must be the substitute) in? What memorials you 
can have of the holy time, I see not. A chopped mission- 
ary or two may keep up the thin idea of Lent and the 
wilderness; but what standing evidence have you of the 
Nativity? 'Tis our rosy-cheeked, home-stalled divines, 
whose faces shine to the tune of "Unto us a child is 
born," faces fragrant with the mince-pies of half a cen- 
tury, that alone can authenticate the cheerful mystery. 
I feel my bowels refreshed with the holy tide; my zeal is 
great against the unedified heathen. Down with the Pa- 
godas — down with the idols — Ching-chong-fo — and his 
foolish priesthood ! Come out of Babylon, O my friend ! 
for her time is come; and the child that is native, and 
the Proselyte of Eer gates, shall kindle and smoke to- 
gether ! And in sober sense what makes you so long from 
among us. Manning? You must not expect to see the 
same England again which you left. 

Empires have been overturned, crowns trodden into 
dust, the face of the western world quite changed. Your 
friends have all got old — those you left blooming; my- 
self, (who am one of the few that remember you,) those 
golden hairs which you recollect my taking a pride in, 
turned to silvery and grey. Mary has been dead and 
buried many years: she desired to be buried in the silk 
gown you sent her. Rickman, that you remember active 
and strong, now walks out supported by a servant maid 



94 CHAELES LAMB [^Et. 40 

and a stick. Martin Bumey is a very old man. The 
other day an aged woman knocked at my door, and pre- 
tended to my acquaintance. It was long before I had 
the most distant cognition of her; but at last, together, 
we made her out to be Louisa, the daughter of Mrs. Top- 
ham, formerly Mrs. Morton, who had been Mrs. Reynolds, 
formerly Mrs. Kenney, whose first husband was Holcroft, 
the dramatic writer of the last century. St. Paul's church 
is a heap of ruins; the Monument isn't half so high as 
you knew it, divers parts being successively taken down 
which the ravages of time had rendered dangerous; the 
horse at Charing Cross is gone, no one knows whither; 
and all this has taken place while you have been settling 
whether Ho-hing-tong should be spelt with a — , or a — . 
For aught I see you might almost as well remain where 
you are, and not come like a Struldbrug into a world 
where few were born when you went away. Scarce here 
and there one will be able to make out your face. All your 
opinions will be out of date, your jokes obsolete, your 
puns rejected with fastidiousness as wit of the last age. 
Your way of mathematics has already given way to a 
new method, which after all is I believe the old doctrine 
of Maclaurin, new-vamped up with what he borrowed of 
the negative quantity of fluxions from Euler. 

Poor Godwin! I was passing his tomb the other day in 
Cripplegate churchyard. There are some verses upon it 

written by Miss , which if I thought good enough I 

would send you. He was one of those who would have 
hailed your return, not with boisterous shouts and clam- 
ours, but with the complacent gratulations of a philoso- 
pher anxious to promote knowledge as leading to happi- 
ness; but his systems and his theories are ten feet deep 
in Cripplegate mould. Coleridge is just dead, having 
lived just long enough to close the eyes of Wordsworth, 
who paid the debt to Nature but a week or two before. 
Poor Col., but two days before he died he wrote to a 
bookseller, proposing an epic poem on the "Wanderings 
of Cain," in twenty-four books. It is said he has left 
behind him more than forty thousand treatises in criti- 
cism, metaphysics, and divinity, but few of them in a 
state of completion. They are now destined, perhaps, to 
wrap up spices. You see what mutations the busy hand 



^t. 40] CHAKLES LAMB 95 

of Time has produced, while you have consumed in fool- 
ish voluntary exile that time which might have gladdened 
your friends — benefited your country; but reproaches are 
useless. Gather up the wretched reliques, my friend, as 
fast as you can, and come to your old home. I will rub 
my eyes and try to recognise you. We will shake with- 
ered hands together, and talk of old things — of St. Mary's 
Church and the barber's opposite, where the young stu- 
dents in mathematics used to assemble. Poor Crips, that 
kept it afterwards, set up a fruiterer's shop in Trumping- 
ton Street, and for aught I know resides there still, for 
I saw the name up in the last journey I took there wit*h 
my sister just before she died. I suppose you heard that 
I had left the India House, and gone into the Fish- 
mongers' Almshouses over the bridge. I have a little 
cabin there, small and homely, but you shall be welcome 
to it. You like oysters, and to open them yourself; I'll 
get you some if you come in oyster time. Marshall, God- 
win's old friend, is still alive, and talks of the faces you 
used to make. 

Come as soon as you can. 

C. Lamb. 
To THE Same 
[correcting the "false nuncio"] 

Dec. 26th, 1815. 
Dear Manning, — 

Following your brother's example, I have just ventured 
one letter to Canton, and am now hazarding another (not 
exactly a duplicate) to St. Helena. The first was full of 
unprobable romantic fictions, fitting the remoteness of 
the mission it goes upon; in the present I mean to con- 
fine myself nearer to truth as you come nearer home. A 
correspondence with the uttermost parts of the earth 
necessarily involves in it some heat of fancy, it sets the 
brain agoing, but I can think on the half-way house 
tranquilly. Your friends then are not all dead or grown 
forgetful of you through old age, as that lying letter as- 
serted, anticipating rather what must happen if you kept 
tarrying on forever on the skirts of creation, as there 
seemed a danger of your doing; but they are all tolerably 
well and in full and perfect comprehension of what is 



96 CHAKLES LAMB [JEt. 40 

meant by Manning's coming- home again. Mrs. Kenny 
never lets her tongue rim riot more than in remembrances 
of you. Fanny expends herself in phrases that can only 
be justified by her romantic nature. Mary reserves a 
portion of your silk, not to be buried in, (as the false 
nuncio asserts) but to make up spick and span into a 
bran-new gown to wear when you come. I am the same 
as when you knew me, almost to a surfeiting identity. 
This very night I am going to leave ojf tobacco! Surely 
there must be some other world in which this unconquer- 
able purpose shall be realised. The soul hath not her 
generous aspirings implanted in her in vain. One that 
you knew, and I think the only one of those friends we 
knew much of in common, has died in earnest. Poor 
Priscilla! Her brother Robert is also dead, and several 
of the grown-up brothers and sisters, in the compass of 
a very few years. Death has not otherwise meddled much 
in families that I know. Not but he has his eye upon 
us, and is whetting his feathered dart every instant, as 
you see him truly pictured in that impressive moral pic- 
ture, "The good man at the hour of death." I have in 
trust to put in the post four letters from Diss, and one 
from Lynn, to St. Helena, which I hope will accompany 
this safe, and one from Lynn, and the one before spoken 
of from me, to Canton. But we all hope that these letters 
may be waste paper. I don't know why I have forborne 
writing so long; but it is such a forlorn hope to send a 
scrap of paper straggling over wide oceans! And yet I 
know, when you come home, I shall have you sitting be- 
fore me at our fireside just as if you had never been 
away. In such an instant does the return of a person 
dissipate all the weight of imaginary perplexity from dis- 
tance of time and space! I'll promise you good oysters. 
Cory is dead that kept the shop opposite St. Dunston's; 
but the tougher materials of the shop survive the perish- 
ing frame of its keeper. Oysters continue to flourish 
there under as good auspices. Poor Cory! But if you 
will absent yourself twenty years together, you must not 
expect numerically the same population to congratulate 
your return which wetted the sea-beach with their tears 
when you went away. Have you recovered the breathless 
stone-staring astonishment into which you must have 



^t. 42] CHAKLES LAMB 97 

been thrown upon learning at landing that an Emperor 
of France was living at St. Helena? What an event in 
the solitude of the seas! like finding a fish's bone at the 
top of Plinlimmon ; but these things are nothing in our 
western world. Novelties cease to aifect. Come and try 
what your presence can. 

God bless you. — Your old friend, 

C. Lamb. 
[^t. 42] 

To William Ayrton 
[a request for opera tickets] 

Accountant's Office, 
East India House^ 
Friday, Ap. 18, 1817. 
Dear A., — 

I am in your debt for a very delightful evening — I 
should say two — but Don Giovanni in particular was ex- 
quisite, and I am almost inclined to allow Music to be 
one of the Liberal Arts; which before I doubted. Could 
you let me have 3 Gallery Tickets — don't be startled — 
they shall positively be the last — or 2 or 1 — for the same, 
for to-morrow or Tuesday. They will be of no use for 
to-morrow if not put in the post this day addrest to me, 
Mr. Lamb, India House; if for any other evening, your 
usual blundering direction. No. 3 Middle Temple instead 
of 4 Inner Temple Lane will do. Yours, 

Ch. Lamb. 

To THE Same 
[another request] 

Temple, 12 May [1817]. 
My dear friend — 
Before I end — 
Have you any 

More orders for Don Giovanni 
To give 
Him that doth live 
your faithful Zany? 
Without raillery 
I mean Gallery 
ones. 



98 CHAELES LAMB [^t. 42 

For I am a person that shuns 

All ostentation 
And being at the top of the fashion. 

And seldom go to operas 

But in forma Pauperis. 
I go to the Play 
In a very economical sort of way. 

Rather to see 

Than be seen. 
Though I'm no ill sight 
Neither 

By candle light 
And in some kinds of weather. 

You might pit me 
For weight 

Against Kean. 
But in a grand tragic scene 

Pm nothing. 
It would create a kind of loathing 

To see me act Hamlet. 

There'd be many a damn let 

fly 

At my presumption 
If I should try 
Being a fellow of no gumption. 

By the way tell me candidly how you relish 
This which they call the lapidary 
Style? 
Opinions vary. 
The late Mr. Mellish 

Could never abide it. 
He thought it vile, 
And coxcombical. 
My friend the Poet Laureat 
Who is a great lawyer at 

Anything comical 
Was the first who tried it 
But Mellish could never abide it. 

But it signifies very little what Mellish said. 
Because he is dead. 



^t. 42] CHAKLES LAMB 9^ 

For who can confute 
A body that's mute? 
Or who would fight 
With a senseless sprite? 
Or think of troubling 
An impenetrable old goblin 
That's dead and gone 
And stiff as a stone — 
To convince him with arguments pro and con 
As if he were some live logician 

Bred up at Merton 
or Mr. Hazlitt the Metaphysician — 

Ha! Mr. Ayrton — 
With all your rare tone — 

For tell me how should an apparition 
List to your call. 
Though you talk'd forever 
Ever so clever 

When his ear itself 
By which he must hear or not hear at all 
Is laid on the shelf ? 
Or put the case 
(for more grace) 
It were a female spectre — 
How could you expect her 
To take much gust 
In long speeches 
With her tongue as dry as dust 
In a sandy place 
Where no peaches 
Nor lemons nor limes nor oranges hang 

To drop on the drouth of an arid harangue, 
or quench 
With their sweet drench 
The fiery pangs which the worms inflict 
With their endless nibblings 
Like quibblings 
Which the corpse may dislike, but can ne'er contradicts 
Hal Mr. Ayrton I 
With all your rare tone — 

I am C. Lamb. 



100 CHARLES LAMB [^t. 42 

[^t. 42] 

To Charles Chambers 
[favourite dishes] 

1 Sept., 1817. 

With regard to a John Dory, which you desire to be 
particularly informed about, — I honour the fish, but it is 
rather on account of Quin, who patronised it, and whose 
taste (of a dead man) I had as lieve go by as any body's, 
Apicius and Heliogabalus excepted — this latter started 
nightingales' brains and peacocks' tongues as a garnish. 
Else, in itself, and trusting to my own poor single judg- 
ment, it hath not the moist, mellow, oleaginous, gliding, 
smooth descent from the tongue to the palate, thence to 
the stomach, etc., as your Brighton turbot hath, which I 
take to be the most friendly and familiar flavour of any 
that swims — most genial and at home to the palate. 

Nor has it, on the other hand, that fine falling-off 
flakiness, that obsequious peeling off (as it were like a sea 
onion) which endears your cod's-head and shoulders to 
some appetites, that manly firmness, combined with a sort 
of womanish coming-in-pieces which the same cod's-head 
and shoulders hath — where the whole is easily separable, 
pliant to a knife or spoon, but each individual flahe pre- 
sents a pleasing resistance to the opposed tooth — you un- 
derstand me; these delicate subjects are necessarily ob- 
scure. 

But it has a third flavour of its own, totally distinct 
from cod or turbot, which it must be owned may to some 
not injudicious palates render it acceptable; but to my 
unpractised tooth it presented rather a crude river-fish- 
flavour, like your pike or carp, and perhaps, like them, 
should have been tamed and corrected by some laborious 
and well-chosen sauce. Still I always suspect a fish which 
requires so much of artificial settings-off. Your choicest 
relishes (like native loveliness) need not the foreign aid 
of ornament, but are, when unadorned (that is, with 
nothing but a little plain anchovy and a squeeze of lemon) 
are then adorned the most. However, I shall go to Bright- 
on again, next summer, and shall have an opportunity 
of correcting my judgment, if it is not sufficiently in- 



^t. 42] CHAELES LAMB 101 

formed. I can only say that when Nature was pleased 
to make the John Dory so notoriously deficient in out- 
ward graces (as, to be sure, he is the very rhinoceros 
of fishes, the ugliest dog that swims, except perhaps the 
sea satyr, which I never saw, but which they say is terri- 
ble) — when she formed him with so few external advan- 
tages, she might have bestowed a more elaborate finish 
on his parts internal, and have given him a relish, a 
sapor, to recommend him, as she made Pope a poet to 
make up for making him crooked. 

I am sorry to find that you have got a knack of saying 
things which are not sure to show your wit. If I had 
no wit, but what I must show at the expense of my 

virtue or my modesty, I had as lieve be as stupid as 

at the tea warehouse. Depend upon it, my dear Cham- 
bers, that an ounce of integrity at our death-bed will 
stand us in more avail than all the wit of Congreve or 

. For instance, you tell me a fine story about Truss, 

and his playing at Leamington, which I know to be false, 
because I have advice from Derby that he was whipt 
through the town on that very day you say he appeared 
in some character or other for robbing an old woman 
at church of a seal ring. And Dr. Parr has been two 
months dead. So it won't do to scatter these random 
stories about among people that know anything. Besides, 
your forte is not invention. It is judgment, particularly 
shown in your choice of dishes. We seem in that instance 
born under one star. I like you for liking hare. I esteem 
you for disrelishing minced veal. Liking is too cold a 
word: I love you for your noble attachment to the fat, 
unctuous juices of deer's flesh and the green unspeakable 
of turtle. I honour you for your endeavours to esteem 
and approve of my favourite, which I venture to recom- 
mend to you as substitute for hare, bullock's heart, and 
I am not offended that you cannot taste it with my 
palate. A true son of Epicurus should reserve one taste 
peculiar to himself. For a long time I kept the secret 
about the exceeding deliciousness of the marrow of boiled 
knuckle of veal, till my tongue weakly ran out in its 
praises, and now it is prostitute and common. But I 
have made one discovery which I will not impart till my 
dying scene is over — perhaps it will be my last mouthful 



102 CHAELES LAMB [^t. 47 

in this world: delicious thought, enough to sweeten (or 
rather make savoury) the hour of death. It is a little 
square bit about ^ this size, in or 

bone of a fried 
Fat I can't call 
neither altogeth- 
beautiful c o m - 
_^_^__^_^_ Nature must 
have made in i— — ^-^— Paradise, Park 



near the knuckle- 

joint of . 

it, nor lean 
er; it is that 
p ound which 



Venison, before she separated the two substances, the dry 
and the oleaginous, to punish sinful mankind: Adam ate 
them entire and inseparable, and this little taste of Eden 

in the knuckle-bone of a fried seems the only relique 

of a Paradisaical state. When I die, an exact description 
of its topography shall be left in a cupboard with a key, 
inscribed on which these words, "C. Lamb, dying, im- 
parts this to C. Chambers, as the only worthy depository 
of such a secret." You'll drop a tear. . . . 



[^t. 47] 

To "William Wordsworth 
[the loss of friends] 

March 20th, 1822. 
My dear Wordsworth, — 

A letter from you is very grateful; I have not seen a 
Kendal postmark so long! We are pretty well, save colds 
and rheumatics, and a certain deadness to everything, 
which I think I may date from poor John's loss, and an- 
other accident or two at the same time, that have made 
me almost bury myself at Dalston, where yet I see more 
faces than I could wish. Deaths overset one, and put one 
out long after the recent grief. Two or three have died 
within the last two twelvemonths, and so many parts of me 
have been numbed. One sees a picture, reads an anecdote, 
starts a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this per- 
son in preference to every other : the person is gone whom 
it would have peculiarly suited. It won't do for another. 
Every departure destroys a class of sympathies. There's 
Captain Burney gone! What fun has whist now? What 
matters it what you kod, if you can no longer fancy him 



Mi. 47] CHAELES LAMB 103 

looking over you ? One never hears anything, but the im- 
age of the particular person occurs with whom alone al- 
most you would care to share the intelligence. Thus one 
distributes oneself about; and now for so many parts of 
me I have lost the market. Common natures do not suffice 
me. Good people^ as they are called, will not serve. I 
want individuals. I am made up of queer points, and I 
want so many answering needles. The going away of 
friends does not make the remainder more precious. It 
takes so much from them as there was a common link. 
A. B. and C. make a party. A. dies. B. not only loses A. ; 
but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part in B., and so 
the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables. 
I express myself muddily, capite dolente. I have a dulling 
cold. My theory is to enjoy life, but my practice is 
against it. I grow ominously tired of official confinement. 
Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is 
not subdued to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome 
it is to breathe the air of four pent walls without relief, 
day after day, all the golden hours of the day between ten 
and four, without ease or interposition. Toedet me harum 
quotidianarum formarum, these pestilential clerk-faces al- 
ways in one's dish. Oh for a few years between the grave 
and the desk! — they are the same, save at the latter you 

are the outside machine. The foul enchanter* , 

("letters four do form his name" — Busirane is his name in 
hell,) that has curtailed you of some domestic comforts, 
hath laid a heavier hand on me, not in present infliction, 
but in taking away the hope of enfranchisement. I dare 
not whisper to myself a pension on this side of absolute 
incapacitation and infirmity, till years have sucked me 
dry; — Otium cum indignitate. I had thought in a green old 
age (Oh t green thought !) to have retired to Bonder's End, 
(emblematic name, how beautiful!) in the Ware Road, 
there to have made up my accounts with heaven and the 
company, toddling about between it and Cheshunt; anon 
stretching, on some fine Izaak Walton morning, to Hoddes- 
^n or Amwell, careless as a beggar ; but walking, walking 
ever till I fairly walked myself off my legs, dying walking! 

* Joseph Hume, M.P., who had attacked abuses in the East India 
Company (Lucas). 

t Andrew Marvell's The Garden. 



104 CHARLES LAMB [^t. 47 

The hope is gone. I sit like Philomel all day (but not 
singing), with my breast against this thorn of a desk, with 
the only hope that some pulmonary affliction may relieve 
me. Vide Lord Palmerston's report of the clerks in the 
War Office, (Debates in this morning's Times,) by which 
it appears, in twenty years as many clerks have been 
coughed and catarrhed out of it into their freer graves. 
Thank you for asking about the pictures. Milton hangs 
over my fire-side in Covent Garden, (when I am there,) 
the rest have been sold for an old song, wanting the elo- 
quent tongue that should have set them off! You have 
gratified me with liking my meeting with Dodd. For the 
Malvolio story — the thing is become in verity a sad task, 
and I eke it out with anything. If I could slip out of 
it I should be happy, but our chief-reputed assistants have 
forsaken us. The Opium-Eater crossed us once with a 
dazzling path, and hath as suddenly left us darkling; and, 
in short, I shall go on from dull to worse, because I cannot 
resist the booksellers' importunity — the old plea you know 
of authors, but I believe on my part sincere. Hartley I 
do not so often see: but I never see him in unwelcome 
hour. I thoroughly love and honour him. I send you a 
frozen epistle, but it is Winter and dead time of the year 
with me. May heaven keep something like Spring and 
Summer up with you, strengthen your eyes, and make 
mine a little lighter to encounter with them, as I hope 
they shall yet and again, before all are closed. 

Yours, with every kind remembrance, 

C.L. 
[^t. 47] 

To Mr. and Mrs. Bruton 
[thanks for a pig] 

Twelfth Day, '23. 

The pig was above my feeble praise. It was a dear 
pigmy. There was some contention as to who should have 
the ears; but, in spite of his obstinacy, (deaf as these 
little creatures are to advice,) I contrived to get at one 
of them. 

It came in boots too, which I took as a favour. Gener- 
ally these pretty toes, pretty toes I are missing; but I sup- 
pose he wore them to look taller. 



^t. 47] CHARLES LAMB 105 

He must have been the least of his race. His little- 
foots would have gone into the silver slipper. I take him 
to have been a Chinese and a female. 

If Evelyn could have seen him, he would never have 
farrowed two such prodigious volumes; seeing how much 
good can be contained in — how small a compass ! 

He crackled delicately. 

I left a blank at the top of my letter, not being de- 
termined which to address it to: so farmer and farmer's 
wife will please to divide our thanks. May your granaries 
be full, and your rats empty, and your chickens plump, 
and your envious neighbours lean, and your labourers busy,. 
and you as idle and as happy as the day is long ! 

Vive I'Agriculture! 
How do you make your pigs so little? 
They are vastly engaging at the age: 

I was so myself. 
Now I am a disagreeable old ho<r, 
A middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half. 
My faculties (thank God!) are not much impaired. 

I have my sight, hearing, taste, pretty perfect ; and can 
read the Lord's Prayer in common type, by the help of a 
candle, without making many mistakes. 

Believe me, that while my faculties last, I shall ever 
cherish a proper appreciation of your many kindnesses 
in this way, and that the last lingering relish of past 
favours upon my dying memory will be the smack of that 
little ear. It was the left ear, which is lucky. Many 
happy returns, not of the pig, but of the New Year, to 
both! Mary, for her share of the pig and the memoirs, 
desires to send the same. 

Yours truly, 

C. Lamb. 



106 CHAELES LAMB [^t. 48 

[^t. 48] 

To Miss Hutchinson 

[MARY lamb's handwriting] 

[April 25, 1823.] 
Dear Miss H.. — 

Mary has such an invincible reluctance to any epistolary 
exertion, that I am sparing her a mortification by taking 
the pen from her. The plain truth is, she writes such a 
pimping, mean, detestable hand, that she is ashamed of 
the formation of her letters. There is an essential poverty 
and abjectness in the frame of them. They look like 
begging letters. And then she is sure to omit a most 
substantial word in the second draught (for she never 
ventures an epistle without a foul copy first,) which is 
obliged to be interlined; which spoils the neatest epistle, 
you know. Her figures, 1, 2, 3, 4, &c., where she has 
occasion to express numerals, as in the date, (25th April 
1823,) are not figures, but figurantes; and the combined 
posse go staggering up and down shameless, as drunkards 
in the day-time. It is no better when she rules her paper. 
Her lines "are not less erring" than her words. A sort 
of unnatural parallel lines, that are perpetually threaten- 
ing to meet; which, you know, is quite contrary to Euclid. 
Her very blots are not bold like this, \liere a large hlot is 
inserted,] but poor smears, half left in and half scratched 
out, with another smear left in their place. I like a clear 
letter; a bold free hand, and a fearless flourish. Then she 
has always to go through them (a second operation) to 
dot her €s and cross her ^^s. I don't think she can make a 
corkscrew if she tried, which has such a fine effect at 
the end or middle of an epistle, and fills up. 

There is a corkscrew! — one of the best I ever drew. 
By the way, what incomparable whisky that was of Monk- 
house's ! But if I am to write a letter, let me begin, and 
not stand flourishing, like a fencer at a fair. 



April 25th, 1823. 
Dear Miss H., — 

It gives me great pleasure (the letter now begins) to 
hear that you got down so smoothly, and that Mrs. Monk- 



^t. 49] CHARLES LAMB 107 

house's spirits are so good and enterprising. It shows 
whatever her posture may be, that her mind at least is not 
supine. I hope the excursion will enable the former to 
keep pace with its outstripping neighbour. Pray present 
our kindest wishes to her and all; (that sentence should 
properly have come into the Postscript, but we airy 
mercurial spirits, there is no keeping us in.) "Time" (as 
was said of one of us*) "toils after us in vain." I am 
afraid our co-visit with Coleridge was a dream. I shall 
not get away before the end (or middle) of June, and 
then you will be frog-hopping at Boulogne; and besides, I 
think the Gilmans would scarce trust him with us ; I have 
a malicious knack at cutting of apron-strings. The Saints' 
days you speak of have long since fled to heaven, with 
Astrsea, and the cold piety of the age lacks fervour to re- 
call them; only Peter left his key — the iron one of the 
two that "shuts amain" — and that is the reason I am 
locked up. Meanwhile of afternoons we pick up primroses 
at Dalston, and Mary corrects me when I call 'em cowslips. 
God bless you all; and pray remember me euphoniously 
to Mr. Gruvellegan. That Lee Priory must be a dainty 
bower. Is it built of flints? — and does it stand at Kings- 
gate? 



[^t. 49] 

To Bernard Bartox 

[WILLUM BLAKE ; LORD BYRON] 

[Postmark, May 15, 1824.] 
Dear B. B.,— 

I am oppressed with business all day and Company all 
night. But I will snatch a quarter of an hour. Your 
recent acquisitions of the Picture and the Letter are 
greatly to be congratulated. I too have a picture of my 
father and the copy of his first Love verses, but they 
have been mine long. Blake is a real name, I assure you, 
and a most extraordinary man, if he be still living. He 
is the Robert Blake,t whose wild designs accompany a 

* Shakespeare. Dr. Johnson's Prologue at the Opening of Drury 
Lane Theatre. 
t William Blake. 



108 CHARLES LAMB [^t. 49 

splendid folio edition of the "Night Thoughts," which you 
may have seen, in one of which he pictures the parting 
of soul and body by a solid mass of human form floating olf 
God knows how from a lumpish mass (fac Simile to itself) 
left behind on the dying bed. He paints in water colours, 
marvellous strange pictures, visions of his brain which he 
asserts that he has seen. They have great merit. He has 
seen the old Welsh bards on Snowden — he has seen the 
Eeautifullest, the Strongest, and the Ugliest Man, left 
alone from the Massacre of the Britons by the Romans, 
and has painted them from memory (I have seen his paint- 
ings) and asserts them to be as good as the figures of 
Raphael and Angelo, but not better, as they had precisely 
the same retro-visions and prophetic visions with [himself.] 
The painters in Oil (which he will have it that neither 
of them practised) he affirms to have been the ruin of 
art, and affirms that all the while he was engaged in his 
Water-paintings, Titian was disturbing him, Titian the 
HI Genius of Oil Painting. His pictures, one in particu- 
lar, the Canterbury Pilgrims (far above Stothard's) have 
great merit, but hard, dry, yet with grace. He has writ- 
ten a Catalogue of them, with a most spirited criticism 
on Chaucer, but mystical and full of Vision. His poems 
have been sold hitherto only in manuscript. I never 
read them, but a friend at my desire procured the Sweep 
Song. There is one to a Tiger, which I have heard 
recited, beginning 

"Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, 
Thro* the desarts of the night" * 

which is glorious. But alas! I have not the Book, for 
the man is flown, whither I know not, to Hades, or a 
Mad House. — But I must look on him as one of the most 
extraordinary persons of the age. Montgomery's Book I 
have not much hope from. The Society, with the affected 
name, have been labouring at it for these twenty years, 
and made few converts. I think it was injudicious to 
mix stories avowedly colour'd by fiction with the sad 
true statements from the parliamentary records, &c., but 

* "In the forests of the night." 



^t. 49] CHARLES LAMB 109 

I wish the little Negroes all the good that can come from 
it. I Z^atter'd my brains (not butter'd them — but it is 
a bad a) for a few verses for them, but I could make 
nothing of it. You have been luckier. But Blake's are 
the flower of the set you will, I am sure, agree, tho' 
some of Montgomery's at the end are pretty — but the 
Dream awkwardly paraphras'd from B. 

With the exception of an Epilogue for a Private Theat- 
rical, I have written nothing now for near six months. 
It is in vain to spur me on. I must wait. I cannot write 
without a genial impulse, and I have none. 'Tis barren 
all and dearth. No matter, life is something without 
scribbling. I have got rid of my bad spirits, and hold up 
pretty well this rain-damn'd May. 

So we have lost another Poet. I never much relished 
his Lordship's mind, and shall be sorry if the Greeks have 
cause to miss him. He was to me offensive, and I never 
can make out his great power, which his admirers talk 
of. Why, a line of Wordsworth is a lever to lift the im- 
mortal spirit! Byron's can only move the Spleen. He 
was at best a Satyr ist — in any other way he was mean 
enough. I daresay I do him injustice; but I cannot love 
him, nor squeeze a tear to his memory. He did not like 
the world, and he has left it, as Alderman Curtis ad- 
vised the Radicals, "if they don't like their country, 
damn 'em, let 'em leave it" — they possessing no rood of 
Ground in England, and he ten thousand acres. Byron 
was better than many Curtises. 

Farewell. Accept this Apology for a Letter from one 
who owes you so much in that kind. 

Yours ever truly, 
0. L. 
B. Barton, Esq., 

Woodbridge, Suffolk. 



110 CHARLES LAMB [^t. 50 

[^t. 50] 

To William Wordsworth 
[his release and pension] 

CoLEBROOK Cottage, 6th April, 1825. 
Dear Wordsworth, — 

I have been several times meditating a letter to you 
concerning the good thing which has befallen me, but 
the thought of poor Monkhouse came across me. He 
was one that I had exulted in the prospect of congratu- 
lating me. He and you were to have been the first par- 
ticipators, for indeed it has been ten weeks since the 
first motion of it. Here am I then, after thirty-three 
years' slavery, sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock 
this finest of all April mornings, a freed man, with 
£441 a year for the remainder of my life, live I as long 
as John Dennis, who outlived his annuity and starved 
at ninety: £441, i.e., £450, with a deduction of £9 for a 
provision secured to my sister, she being survivor, the 
pension guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, &c. 

I came home For Ever on Tuesday in last week. The 
incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me. 
It was like passing from life into eternity. Every year 
to be as long as three, i.e., to have three times as much real 
time (time that is my own) in it! I wandered about 
thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But that 
tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand 
the nature of the gift. Holydays, even the annual month, 
were always uneasy joys; their conscious fugitiveness; 
the craving after making the most of them. Now, when 
all is holyday, there are no holydays. I can sit at home, 
in rain or shine, without a restless impulse for walkings. 
I am daily steadying, and shall soon find it as natural 
to me to be my own master, as it has been irksome to 
have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an 
obscure feeling that some good has happened to us. 

Leigh Hunt and Montgomery, after their releasements, 
describe the shock of their emancipation much as I feel 
mine. But it hurt their frames. I eat, drink, and 
sleep as sound as ever. I lay no anxious schemes for 
going hither and thither, but take things as they occur. 
Yesterdav T excursioned twenty miles; to-day I write 



^t. 50] CHARLES LAMB • 111 

a few letters. Pleasuring was for fugitive play-days; 
mine are fugitive only in the sense that life is fugitive. 
Freedom and life coexistent! 

At the foot of such a call upon you for gratulation, 
I am ashamed to advert to that melancholy event. Monk- 
house was a character I learned to love slowly, but it 
grew upon me, yearly, monthly, daily. What a chasm 
has it made in our pleasant parties! His noble friendly 
face was always coming before me, till this hurrying 
event in my life came, and for the time has absorbed 
all interest; in fact it has shaken me a little. My old 
desk companions, with whom I have had such merry 
hours, seem to reproach me for removing my lot from 
among them. They were pleasant creatures; but to 
the anxieties of business, and a weight of possible worse 
ever impending, I was not equal. Tuthill and Oilman 
gave me my certificates. I laughed at the friendly lie 
implied in them; but my sister shook her head, and said 
it was all true. Indeed, this last ^Yinter I was Jaded 
out: Winters were always worse than other parts of the 
year, because the spirits are worse, and I had no day- 
light. In Summer I had day-light evenings. The relief 
was hinted to me from a superior power, when I, poor 
slave, had not a hope but that I must wait another seven 
years with Jacob: and lo! the Eachel which I coveted is 
brought to me! 

Have you read the noble dedication of Irving's "Mis- 
sionary Orations" to S. T. C? Who shall call this man 
a quack hereafter ? What the Kirk will think of it neither 
I nor Irving care. When somebody suggested to him that 
it would not be likely to do him good, videlicet, among 
his own people, "That is a reason for doing it," was his 
noble answer. That Irving thinks he has profited mainly 
by S. T. C, I have no doubt. The very style of the 
Dedication shows it. 

Communicate my news to Southey, and beg his pardon 
for my being so long acknowledging his kind present of 
the "Church," which circumstances, having no reference 
to himself, prevented at the time. Assure him of my 
deep respect and friendliest feelings. 

Divide the same, or rather each take the whole to you 



112 • CHARLES LAMB [^t. 51 

— I mean you and all yours. To Miss Hutchinson I 
must write separate. 

Farewell! and end at last, long selfish letter. 

0. Lamb. 

r^t. 61] 

To J. B. DiBDIN 

[dibdin's rainy Sunday] 
An answer is requested. 

Saturday, September 9, 1826. 
Dear D., — 

I have observed that a Letter is never more acceptable 
than when received upon a rainy day, especially a rainy 
Sunday; which moves me to send you somewhat, however 
short. This will find you sitting after Breakfast, which 
you will have prolonged as far as you can with consistency 
to the poor hand-maid that has the reversion of the Tea 
Leaves; making two nibbles of your last morsel of stale 
roll (you cannot have new ones on the Sabbath), and 
reluctantly coming to an end, because when that is done, 
what can you do till dinner? You cannot go to the 
Beach, for the rain is drowning the sea, turning rank 
Thetis fresh, taking the brine out of Neptune's pickles, 
while mermaids sit upon rocks with umbrellas, their ivory 
combs sheathed for spoiling in the wet of waters foreign 
to them. You cannot go to the library, for it's shut. 
You are not religious enough to go to church. O it's 
worth while to cultivate piety to the gods, to have some- 
thing to fill up the heart on a wet Sunday ! You cannot 
cast accounts, for your ledger is being eaten with moths 
in the Ancient Jewry. You cannot play at draughts, 
for there is none to play with you, and besides there is 
not a draught-board in the house. You cannot go to 
market, for it closed last night. You cannot look into 
the shops, — their backs are shut upon you. You cannot 
read the Bible, for it is not good reading for the sick and 
hypochondriacal. You cannot while away an hour with 
a friend, for you have no friend round that Wrekin. 
You cannot divert yourself with a stray acquaintance, 
for you have picked none up. You cannot bear the 
chiming of Bells, for they invite you to a banquet where 



^t. 51] CHARLES LAMB 113 

you are no visitant. You cannot cheer yourself with the 
prospect of to-morrow's letter, for none come on Mon- 
days. You cannot count those endless vials on the 
mantelpiece with any hope of making a variation in their 
numbers. You have counted your spiders: your Bastile 
is exhausted. You sit and deliberately curse your hard 
exile from all familiar sights and sounds. Old Ranking 
poking in his head unexpectedly would just now be as 
good to you as Grimaldi. Anything to deliver you from 
this intolerable weight of Ennui. You are too ill to 
shake it off:- not ill enough to submit to it, and to lie 
down as a lamb under it. The Tyranny of sickness is 
nothing to the Cruelty of Convalescence: 'tis to have 
Thirty Tyrants ,for one. That pattering rain drops on 
your brain. You'll be worse after dinner, for you must 
dine a't one to-day, that Betty may go to afternoon serv- 
ice. She insists upon having her chopped hay. And 
then when she goes out, who ivas something to you, some- 
thing to speak to — what an interminable afternoon you'll 
have to go thro'. You can't break yourself from your 
locality: you cannot say "to-morrow I set off for Ban- 
stead, by God": for you are booked for Wednesday. 
Foreseeing this, I thought a cheerful letter would come in 
opportunely. If any of the little topics for mirth I have 
thought upon should serve you in this utter extinguish- 
ment of sunshine, to make you a little merry, I shall 
have had my ends. I love to make things comfortable. 
. . . This, which is scratched out, was the most material 
thing I had to say, but on maturer thoughts I defer it. 

P.S. — We are just sitting down to dinner with a pleas- 
ant party, Coleridge, Reynolds the dramatist, and Sam 
Bloxam: to-morrow (that is to-day), Listen, and Wyat 
of the Wells, dine with us. May this find you as jolly 
and freakish as we mean to be. 

C. Lamb. 
Addressed 

T. Dibdin, Esq., 
No. 4, Meadow Cottages, 
Hastings. 



114 CHAKLES LAMB [^t. 52 

[^t. 52] 

To P. G. Patmore 
[after a funeral] 

LoNDRES, Julie 19, 1827. 
Dear P., — 

I am so poorly. I have been to a funeral, where I 
made a pun, to the consternation of the rest of the 
mourners. And we had wine. I can't describe to you 
the howl which the widow set up at proper intervals. 
Dash could, for it was not unlike what he makes. 

The letter I sent you was one directed to the care of 

E. W , India House, for Mrs. H. Which Mrs. H 

I don't yet know; but A has taken it to France on 

speculation. Really it is embarrassing. There is Mrs. 
present H., Mrs. late H., and Mrs. John H., and to which 
of the three Mrs. Wigginses it appertains, I know not. 
I wanted to open it, but 'tis transportation. 

I am sorry you are plagued about your book. I would 
strongly recommend you to take for one story Massinger's 
Old Law. It is exquisite. I can think of no other. 

Dash is frightful this morning. He whines and stands 
up on his hind legs. He misses Becky, who is gone to 
town. I took him to Barnet the other day, and he 
couldn't eat his vittles after it. Pray God his intel- 
lectuals be not slipping. 

Mary is gone out for some soles. I suppose 'tis no use 
to ask you to come and partake of 'em; else there is a 
steam vessel. 

I am doing a tragi-comedy in two acts, and have got 
on tolerably; but it will be refused, or worse. I never 
had luck with anything my name was put to. 

O, I am so poorly! I waked it at my cousin's the 
bookbinder, who is now with God; or, if he is not, 'tis no 
fault of mine. 

We hope the frank wines do not disagree with Mrs. 
P . By the way, I like her. 

Did you ever taste frogs ? Get them if you can. They 
are like little Lilliput rabbits, only a thought nicer. 

Plow sick I am! — not of the world, but of the widow's 
shrub. She's sworn under £6,000, but I think she per- 



^t. 52] CHAELES LAMB 115 

jured herself. She howls in E la, and I comfort her in 
B flat. You understand music? 

If you hav'n't got Massinger, you have nothing to do 
but go to the first Bibliotheque you can light upon at 
Boulogne, and ask for it (Gilford's edition) ; and if they 
hav'n't got it you can have "Athalie" par Monsieur Ra- 
cine, and make the best of it. But that Old Law is 
delicious. 

"No shrimps!" (that's in answer to Mary's question 
about how the soles are to be done). 

I am uncertain where this wandering letter may reach 
you. What you mean by Poste Restante, God knows. 
Do you mean I must pay the postage ? So I do, to Dover. 

We had a merry pass^e with the widow at the Com- 
mons. She was howling — part howling and part giving 
directions to the proctor — when crash! down went my 
sister through a crazy chair, and made the clerks grin, 
and I grinned, and the widow tittered, and then I knew 
that she was not inconsolable. Mary was more fright- 
ened than hurt. 

She'd make a good match for any body (by she I mean 
the widow). 

"If^he bring but a relict away, 
He is happy, nor heard to complain." 

• Shenstone. 

Proctor has got a wen growing out at the nape of his 
neck, which his wife wants him to have cut oif; but I 
think it is rather an agreeable excrescence: like his 
poetry, redundant. Hone has hanged himself for debt. 
Godwin was taken up for picking pockets. Moxon has 
fallen in love with Emma, our nut-brown maid. Becky 
takes to bad courses. Her father was blown up in a 
steam machine. The coroner found it "insanity." I 
should not like him to sit on my letter. 

Do you observe my direction. Is it Gallic-classical? 
Do try and get some frogs. You must ask for "gre- 
nouilles" (green eels). They don't understand "frogs,'' 
though 'tis a common phrase with us. 

If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne), inquire if old 
Godfrey is living, and how he got home from the cru- 
sades. He must be a very old man. 



116 CHAELES LAMB [xEt. 5i 

If there is anything new in politics or literature in 
France, keep it till I see you again, for I'm in no hurry. 
Chatty Briant* is well, I hope. 

I think I have no more news; only give both our loves 
(all three, says Dash,) to Mrs. P— — , and bid her get 
quite well, as I am at present, bating qualms, and the 
grief incident to losing a valuable relation. 

C. L. 

[^t. 54] 

To William Wordsworth 
[boarding in a village] 

Enfield, Jan. 22nd, 1830. 
And is it a year since we parted from you at the steps 
of Edmonton stage? There are not now the years that 
there used to be. The tale of the dwindled age of men, 
reported of successional mankind, is true of the same 
man only. We do not live a year in a year now. 'Tis 
a punctum stans. The seasons pass us with indifference. 
Spring cheers not, nor Winter heightens our gloom; Au- 
tumn hath foregone its moralities, — they are "hey-pass 
repass," as in a show-box. Yet, as far as last year oc- 
curs back, — for they scarce show a reflex now, they make 
no memory as heretofore, — 'twas sufficiently gloomy. Let 
the sullen nothing pass. Suffice it, that after sad spirits, 
prolonged through many of its months, as it called them, 
we have cast our skins; have taken a farewell of the 
pompous, troublesome trifle, called house-keeping, and 
are settled down into poor boarders and lodgers at next 
door with an old couple, the Baucis and Baucida of dull 
Enfield. Here we have nothing to do with our victuals 
but to eat them; with the garden but to see it grow; 
with the tax-gatherer but to hear him knock; with the 
maid but to hear her scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, 
baker, are things unknown to us, save as spectators of the 
pageant. We are fed we know not how; quietists — con- 
fiding ravens. We have otium pro dignitate, a respectable 
insignificance. Yet in the self-condemned obliviousness, 
in the stagnation, some molesting yearnings of life, not 

* Chateaubriand. 



^t. 54] CHARLES LAMB 117 

quite killed, rise, prompting' me that there was a London, 
and that I was of that old Jerusalem. In dreams I am in 
Fleet Market, but I wake and cry to sleep again, I die 
hard, a stubborn Eloisa in this detestable Paraclete. 
What have I gained by health? Intolerable dulness. 
What by early hours and moderate meals ? A total blank. 
O never let the lying poets be believed, who 'tice men 
from the cheerful haunts of streets, or think they mean 
it not of a country village. In the ruins of Palmyra I 
could gird myself up to solitude, or muse to the snorings 
of the Seven Sleepers; but to have a little teazing image 
of a town about one; country folks that do not look like 
country folks; shops two yards square, half-a-dozen ap- 
ples, and two penn'orth of overlooked ginger-bread for the 
lofty fruiterers of Oxford Street; and, for the immortal 
book and print stalls, a circulating library that stands 
still, where the show-picture is a last year's Valentine, 
and whither the fame of the last ten Scotch novels has not 
yet travelled, — (marry, they just begin to be conscious 
of the Redgauntlet :^) — to have a new plastered flat 
church, and to be wishing that it was but a cathedral! 
The very blackguards here are degenerate; the topping 
gentry stock-brokers; the passengers too many to insure 
your quiet, or let you go about whistling or gaping, too 
few to be the fine indifferent pa^-eants of Fleet Street. 
Confining, room-keeping, thickest Winter, is yet more 
bearable here than the gaudy months. Among one's 
books at one's fire by candle, one is soothed into an 
oblivion that one is not in the country; but with the 
light the green fields return, till I gaze, and in a calenture 
can plunge myself into St. Giles's. O let no native 
Londoner imagine that health, and rest, and innocent 
occupation, interchange of converse sweet, and recreative 
study, can make the country anything better than alto- 
gether odious and detestable! A garden was the primitive 
prison, till man, with Promethean felicity and boldness, 
luckily sinned himself out of it. Thence followed Baby- 
lon, Nineveh, Venice, London, haberdashers, goldsmiths, 
taverns, playhouses, satires, epigrams, puns, — these all 
came in on the town part, and the thither side of inno- 

• Published in 1824. 



118 CHAELES LAMB [^t. 54 

cence. Man found out inventions. From my den I re- 
turn you condolence for your decaying- sight; not for 
anything there is to see in the country, but for the miss 
of the pleasure of reading a London newspaper. The 
poets are as well to listen to; any thing high may, nay 
must, be read out; you read it to yourself with an 
imaginary auditor; but the light paragraphs must be 
glid over by the proper eye; mouthing mumbles their 
gossamery substance. 'Tis these trifles I should mourn 
in fading sight. A newspaper is the single gleam of 
comfort I receive here; it comes from rich Cathay with 
tidings of mankind. Yet I could not attend to it, read 
out by the most beloved voice. But your eyes do not get 
worse, I gather. O for the collyrium of Tobias inclosed 
in a whiting's liver, to send you with no apocryphal good 
wishes! The last, long time I heard from you, you had 
knocked your head against something. Do not do so; 
for your head (I do not flatter) is not a knob, or the 
top of a brass nail, or the end of a nine pin, — unless a 
Vulcanian hammer could fairly batter a "Recluse" out 
of it ; then would I bid the smirched god knock and knock 
lustily, the two-handed skinker. Mary must squeeze out 
a line propria manu, but indeed her fingers have been 
incorrigibly nervous to letter writing for a long interval. 
'Twill please you all to hear, that though I fret like a 
lion in a net, her present health and spirits are better 
than they have been for some time past. She is absolutely 
three years and a half younger, as I tell her, since we have 
adopted this boarding plan. 

Our providers are an honest pair, Dame Westwood and 
her husband. He, when the light of prosperity shined 
on them, a moderately thriving haberdasher within Bow 
bells, retired since with something under a competence; 
writes himself parcel gentleman; hath borne parish of- 
fices ; sings fine old sea songs at threescore and ten ; sighs 
only now and then when he thinks that he has a son on 
his hands, about fifteen, whom he finds a difficulty in 
getting out into the world, and then checks a sigh with 
muttering, as I once heard him prettily, not meaning to 
be heard, "I have married my daughter, however"; takes 
the weather as it comes; outsides it to town in severest 
season; and o' winter nights tells old stories not tending 



^t. 54] CHARLES LAMB 119 

to literature, (how comfortable to author-rid folks!) and 
has one anecdote, upon which and about forty pounds a 
year he seems to have retired in green old age. It was 
how he was a rider in his youth, travelling for shops and 
once (not to balk his employer's bargain) on a sweltering 
day in August, rode foaming into Dunstable upon a mad 
horse, to the dismay and expostulatory wonderment of 
innkeepers, ostlers, &c., who declared they would not have 
bestrid the beast to win the Derby. Understand, the 
creature galled to death and desperation by gad-flies, 
cormorant-winged, worse than beset Inachus's daughter. 
This he tells, this he brindles and burnishes on a Win- 
ter's eve; 'tis his star of set glory, his rejuvenescence, to 
descant upon. Far from me be it {dii avertant) to look 
a gift story in the mouth, or cruelly to surmise (as those 
who doubt the plunge of Curtius) that the inseparate 
conjuncture of man and beast, the centaur-phenomenon 
that staggered all Dunstable, might have been the effect 
of unromantic necessity; that the horse-part carried the 
reasoning, willy nilly; that needs must when such a devil 
drove; that certain spiral configurations in the frame of 
Thomas Westwood unfriendly to alighting, made the al- 
liance more forcible than voluntary. Let him enjoy his 
fame for me, nor let me hint a whisper that shall dis- 
mount Bellerophon. But in case he was an involuntary 
martyr, yet if in the fiery conflict he buckled the soul of 
a constant haberdasher to him, and adopted his flames, 
let accident and him share the glory. You would all like 
Thomas Westwood. How weak is painting to describe a 
man! Say that he stands four feet and a nail high by 
his own yard measure, which, like the sceptre of Aga- 
memnon, shall never sprout again, still you have no 
adequate idea; nor when I tell you that his dear hump, 
which I have favoured in the picture, seems to me of the 
buffalo — indicative and repository of mild qualities, a 
budget of kindnesses — still you have not the man. Knew 
you old Norris of the Temple? sixty years ours and our 
fathers' friend? He was not more natural to us than 
this old W., the acquaintance of scarce more weeks. Un- 
der his roof now ought I to take my rest, but that back- 
looking ambition tells me I might yet be a Londoner! 
Well, if ever we do move, we have incumbrances the less 



120 CHAELES LAMB [^t. 58 

to impede us; all our furniture has faded under the auc- 
tioneer's hammer, going for nothing-, like the tarnished 
frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or 
two left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and 
naked we must go out of it. I would live in London, 
shirtless, bookless. Henry Crabb is at Rome; advices to 
that effect have reached Bury. But by solemn legacy he 
bequeathed at parting (whether he should live or die) a 
turkey of Suffolk to be sent every succeeding Christmas 
to us and divers other friends. What a genuine old 
bachelor's action ! I fear he will find the air of Italy too 
classic. His station is in the Harz forest; his soul is 
be-Goethed. Miss Kelly we never see; Talfourd not this 
half-year: the latter flourishes, but the exact number of 
his children (God forgive me!) I have utterly forgotten. 
We single people are often out in our count there. Shall 
I say two? We see scarce anybody. Can I cram loves 
enough to you all in this little O ? Excuse particularizing. 

C. L. 

[^t. 58] 

To Mrs. Hazlitt 
["a half-way purgatory"] 

May 31st, 1833. 
Dear Mrs. Hazlitt, — 

' I will assuredly come and find you out when I am bet- 
ter. I am driven from house to house by Mary's illness. 
I took a sudden resolution to take my sister to Edmon- 
ton, where she was under medical treatment last time, 
and have arranged to board and lodge with the people. 
Thank God, I have repudiated Enfield. I have got out 
of hell, despair of heaven, and must sit down contented 
in a half-way purgatory. Thus ends this strange event- 
ful history. But I am nearer town, and will get up to 
you somehow before long. 

I repent not of my resolution. 'Tis late, and my hand 
is unsteady; so good-bye till we meet, 

Your old 
C. L. 
Mr. Walden's, 

Church Street, Edmonton. 
Mrs. Hazlitt, No. 4, Palace Street, Pimlico. 



^t. 58] CHARLES LAMB 121 

[^t. 58] 

To Edward Moxon 
[emma isola's watch] 

July 24th, 1833. 

For God's sake give Emma no more watches; one has 
turned her head. She is arrogant and insulting. She 
said something very unpleasant to our old clock in the 
passage, as if he did not keep time, and yet he had made 
her no appointment. She takes it out exerj instant to 
look at the moment-hand. She lugs us out into the fields, 
because there the bird-boys ask you, "Pray, Sir, can you 
tell us what's o'clock?" and she answers them punctually. 
She loses all her time looking to see "what the time is." 
I overheard her whispering, "Just so many hours, min- 
utes, &c., to Tuesday; I think St. George's goes too slow." 
This little present of Time! — why, — 'tis Eternity to her! 

What can make her so fond of a gingerbread watch? 

She has spoiled some of the movements. Between our- 
selves, she has kissed away "half-past twelve," which I 
suppose to be the canonical hour in Hanover Square. 

Well, if "love me love my watch" answers, she will keep 
time to you. 

It goes right by the Horse Guards. 

Dearest M., — Never mind opposite nonsense. She does 
not love you for the watch, but the watch for you. I will 
be at the wedding, and keep the 30th July, as long as my 
poor months last me, as a festival, gloriously. 

Yours ever, 

Elia. 

We have not heard from Cambridge. I will write the 
moment we do. 

Edmonton, 24th July, twenty minutes past three by 
Emma's watch. 



122 CHARLES LAMB [.Et. 58 

[^t. 58] 

To Mr. and Mrs. Moxon 

[MARY LAMB AT THE WEDDING OF EMMA ISOLA] 

August, 1833. 
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Moxon, — 

Time very short. I wrote to Miss Fryer, and had the 
sweetest letter about you, Emma, that ever friendship 
dictated. "I am full of good wishes, I am crying with 
good wishes," she says; but you shall see it. 

Dear Moxon, — I take your writing most kindly, and 
shall most kindly your writing from Paris. 

I want to crowd another letter to Miss Fryer into the 
little time after dinner, before post time. So with twenty 
thousand congratulations, 

Yours, 
C. L. 

I am calm, sober, happy. Turn over for the reason. I 
got home from Dover Street, by Evans, Jxalf as sober as a 
judge. I am turning over a new leaf, as I hope you will 
now. 

[The turn of the leaf presented the following from 
Mary Lamb : — ] 

My dear Emma and Edward Moxon, — 

Accept my sincere congratulations, and imagine more 
good wishes than my weak nerves will let me put into 
good set words. The dreary blank of unanswered ques- 
tions which I ventured to ask in vain was cleared up on 
the wedding day by Mrs. W.' taking a glass of wine, and, 
with a total change of countenance, begging leave to 
drink Mr. and Mrs. Moxon's health. It restored me from 
that moment, as if by an electrical stroke, to the entire 
possession of my senses. I never felt so calm and quiet 
after a similar illness as I do now. I feel as if all tears 
were wiped from my eyes, and all care from my heart. 

Mary Lamb. 



/Et. 59] CHAKLES LAMB 123 

Wednesday. 
Dears again, — 

Your letter interrupted a seventh game at picquet which 
we were having, after walking to Wright's and purchasing 
shoes. We pass our time in cards, walks, and reading. 
We attack Tasso soon. 

C. L. 

Never was such- a calm, or such a recovery. 'Tis her 
own words undictated. 



[^t. 59] 

To Miss Fryer 
["better than the sense and sanity of this world"] 

Feb. 14, 1834. 
Dear Miss Fryer, — 

Your letter found me just returned from keeping my 
birthday (pretty innocent!) at Dover Street. I see them 
pretty often. I have since had letters of business to write, 
or should have replied earlier. In one word, be less un- 
easy about me; I bear my privations very well; I am not 
in the depths of desolation, as heretofore. Your admoni- 
tions are not lost upon me. Your kindness has sunk into 
my heart. Have faith in me ! It is no new thing for me 
to be left to my sister. When she is not violent, her 
rambling chat is better to me than the sense and sanity 
of this world. Her heart is obscured, not buried ; it breaks 
out occasionally; and one can discern a strong mind 
struggling with the billows that have gone over it. I 
could be nowhere happier than under the same roof with 
her. Her memory is unnaturally strong; and from ages 
past, if we may so call the earliest records of our poor life, 
she fetches thousands of names and things that never 
would have dawned upon me again, and thousands from 
the ten years she lived before me. What took place from 
early girlhood to her coming of age, principally lives 
again (every important thing, and every trifle) in her 
brain, with the vividness of real presence. For twelve 
hours incessantly she will pour out without intermission 
all her past life, forgetting nothing, pouring out name 



124 MARY LAMB [^t. 42 

after name to the Waldens, as a dream; sense and non- 
sense; truths and errors huddled together; a medley be- 
tween inspiration and possession. What things we arel 
I know you will bear with me, talking of these things. 
It seems to ease me, for I have nobody to tell these things 
to now. Emma, I see, has got a harp! and is learning to 
play. She has framed her three Walton pictures, and 
pretty they look. That is a book you should read: such 
sweet religion in it, next to Woolman's, though the sub- 
ject be baits, and hooks, and worms, and fishes. She has 
my copy at present, to do two more from. 

Very, very tired! I began this epistle, having been 
epistolizing all the morning, and very kindly would I end 
it, could I find adequate expressions to your kindness. 
We did set our minds on seeing you in Spring. One of 
us will indubitably. But I am not skilled in almanack 
learning to know when Spring precisely begins and ends. 
Pardon my blots; I am glad you like your book. I wish 
it had been half as worthy of your acceptance as John 
Woolman. But 'tis a good-natured book. 



[^t. 42] MARY LAMB 

1764-1847 
To Mrs. Clarkson 

[the failure of MR. H ] 

Tuesday, Deer. 23, 1806. 
My dear Mrs. ClarTcson, — 

You are very kind to say you are 'out of humour with 
yourself for not writing before, but I beg you will never 
be so again. I know so well, and often feel so badly, how 
tiresome writing sometimes is, that I intreat you will 
never write but when you will feel yourself quite inclined. 
— I tried the morning after the failure of our little farce 
to write a line, but you know its .ill success and how 
stoutly we meant to bear it, but I found myself utterly 
incapable of writing one connected sentence, so that was 
the philosophy I wished to boast of. 

I do not love to throw the blame of the ill success of 
a piece upon the actors — it is a common trick with un- 
successful dramatists. The blame rested chiefly with 



^t. 42] MAEY LAMB 125 

Charles, and yet should not be called blame, for it was 
mere ignorance of stage effect — and I am mistaken if he 
has not gained much useful knowledge, more than he 
would have learned from a constant attendance at the 
representations of other people's pieces, by seeing his own 
fail; he seems perfectly aware why, and from what cause 
it failed. He intends to write one more with all his dear 
bought experience in his head, and should that share the 
same fate, he will then turn his mind to some other pur- 
suit. 

I am happy to hear so good an account of your health; 
go on improving as fast as you can, that I may find you 
quite well. At Easter, or a few weeks after, I hope to 
spend a delightful holiday with you at Bury; if we come 
at Easter we cannot stay longer than one week; if we 
defer our journey, we can make a much longer visit, but 
at present I know not how it will be settled, for my 
brother sometimes threatens to pass his hollidays in town 
hunting over old plays at the Museum to extract passages 
for a work (a collection of poetry) Mr. Wordsworth in- 
tends to publish. However, I hope before that time ar- 
rives, he will be able to borrow the books of some good 
old collector of those hidden treasures, and thus they can 
be copied at home and much of Charles' labour and time 
saved. The Museum is only open during his office hours. 
I am much pleased with your friend Henry Robinson. 
He has been truly kind and friendly about the farce. 

That disappointment is wearing out of our heads very 
fast. My brother means to keep at home very much this 
winter, and work very hard. When he is at work, he is 
always happier and in better health. 

I am glad Miss Smith is with you, because Coleridge 
has told me she is the best good girl in the world. 

I am pleased to hear again the name of your old neigh- 
bour Mr. Smith. I well remember him the first season, 
of the School for Scandal; he was ("I being a young 
thing then") a prodigious favourite with me. I cannot 
for the life of me conceive of him as an old man. what 
actors there were then! but as I said before, disappointed 
authors must not complain of actors — you shall see the 
piece when I can spare time to write a copy, or can spare 
the only one we have. No matter for the brains of your 



126 MARY LAMB [^t. 53 

good towns-people. Go amongst them as much as you 
can, I am sure company is a certain cure for your malady. 

I am glad to hear of my friend Tom's improvement; 
never mind his learning, that will come in due time. In- 
deed I have reasons for wishing him a little backward in 
that respect, for I have a little book I mean to send him 
and the printer has been so long bringing it out I began 
to fear Tom would attain so much knowledge as to out- 
grow the use thereof, and Tom's approbation of my first 
production was one of the things I built upon. I suppose 
I may send a parcel by the Bury stage ? That is a foolish 
question to ask, for no doubt I may. 

I rejoice to hear Mr. Clarkson has begun his history 
of the Abolition — May we not expect to see him now in 
a few days? — how I wish he would bring you too. 

We are to stay at home and work, as I forget it is 
Christmas, but we sincerely wish you a merry happy 
Christmas and many, many happy healthy new years. 

Charles' kindest respects to you and Mr. Clarkson and 
young Tom and Miss Buck. Is she not at Bury? I re- 
main your affectionate friend, 

M. Lamb. 

No news of Coleridge lately. 

I shall rejoice to hear from you, whenever you feel writ- 
ing quite pleasant to you. Did you ever see such a queer 
scrawl as mine? 

[Mi. 53] 

To Dorothy Wordsworth 
[a new home] 

1817. 
My dear Miss Wordsworth, — 

Your kind letter has given us very great pleasure; the 
sight of your hand-writing was a most welcome surprise 
to us. We have heard good tidings of you by all our 
friends who were so fortunate as to visit you this Sum- 
mer, and rejoice to see it confirmed by yourself. You 
have quite the advantage, in volunteering .a letter; there 
is no merit in replying to so welcome a stranger. 

We have left the Temple. I think you will be sorry to 
hear this. I know I have never been so well satisfied with 



iEt. 53] MAKY LAMB 127 

"thinking of you at Eydal Mount, as when I could con- 
nect the idea of you with your own Grasmere Cottage. 
Our rooms were dirty and out of repair, and the incon- 
veniences of living in chambers became every year more 
irksome, and so, at last, we mustered up resolution enough 
to leave the good old place, that so long had sheltered us, 
and here we are, living at a brazier's shop, No. 20, in 
Bussell Street, Covent Garden, a place all alive with noise 
and bustle; Drury Lane Theatre in sight from our front, 
and Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub 
of the carriages returning from the play does not annoy 
me in the least; strange that it does not, for it is quite 
tremendous. I quite enjoy looking out of the window, 
and listening to the calling up of the carriages, and the 
squabbles of the coachmen and linkboys. It is the oddest 
scene to look down upon; I am sure you would be amused 
with it. It is well I am in a cheerful place, or I should 
have many misgivings about leaving the Temple. I look 
forward with great pleasure to the prospect of seeing my 
good friend, Miss Hutchinson. I wish Rydal Mount, with 
all its inhabitants enclosed, were to be transplanted with 
her, and to remain stationary in the midst of Covent 
Garden. 

I passed through the street lately where Mr. and Mrs. 
Wordsworth lodged; several fine new houses, which were 
then just rising out of the ground, are quite finished, and 
a noble entrance made that way into Portland Place. I 
am very sorry for Mr. De Quincey. What a blunder the 
poor man made when he took up his dwelling among the 
mountains! I long to see my friend Pypos. Coleridge 
is still at Little Hampton with Mrs. Gilman; he has been 
so ill as to be confined to his room almost the whole time 
he has been there. 

Charles has had all his Hogarths bound in a book; they 
were sent home yesterday, and now that I have them alto- 
gether, and perceive the advantage of peeping close at 
them through my spectacles, I am reconciled to the loss 
of them hanging round the room, which has been a great 
mortification to me — in vain 1 tried to console myself 
with looking at our new chairs and carpets, for we have 
got new chairs, and carpets covering all over our two 
sitting-rooms; I missed my old friends and could not be 



128 THOMAS MOORE [^t. 25 

comforted — then I would resolve to learn to look out of 
the window, a habit I never could attain in my life, and 
I have given it up as a thing* quite impracticable — yet 
when I was at Brighton, last Summer, the first week I 
never took my eyes off from the sea, not even to look in 
a book: I had not seen the sea for sixteen years. Mrs. 
Morgan, who was with us, kept her liking, and continued 
her seat in the window till the very last, while Charles 
and I played truants, and wandered among the hills, which 
we magnified into little mountains, and almost as good 
as Westmoreland scenery: certainly we made discoveries 
of many pleasant walks, which few of the Brighton visi- 
tors have ever dreamed of — for, like as is the case in the 
neighbourhood of London, after the first two or three 
miles we were sure to find ourselves in a perfect solitude. 
I hope we shall meet before the walking faculties of either 
of us fail; you say you can walk fifteen miles with ease; 
that is exactly my stint, and more fatigues me ; four or 
five miles every third or fourth day, keeping very quiet 
between, was all Mrs. Morgan could accomplish. 

God bless you and yours. Love to all and each one. 

I am ever yours most affectionately, M. Lamb. 



[^t. 25] THOMAS MOORE 

1779-1852 
To His Mother 

[a visit to NIAGARA FALLS] 

Niagara, July 24, 1804. 
My dearest Mother, — 

I have seen the Falls, and am all rapture and amaze- 
ment. I cannot give you a better idea of what I felt than 
by transcribing what I wrote off hastily in my journal 
on returning. "Arrived at Chippewa, within three miles 
of the Falls, on Saturday, July 21, to dinner. That even- 
ing walked towards the Falls, but got no farther than 
the rapids, which gave us a prelibation of the grandeur 
we had to expect. Next day, Sunday, July 22, went to 
visit the Falls. Never shall I forget the impression I 
felt at the first glimpse of them which we got as the car- 
riage passed over the hill that overlooks them. We were 



^t. 36] THOMAS MOOKE 129 

not near enough to be agitated by the terrific effects of 
the scene; but saw through the trees this mighty flow of 
waters descending with calm magnificence, and received 
enough of its grandeur to set imagination on the wing; 
imagination which, even at Niagara, can outrun reality. i 
I felt as if approaching the very residence of the Deity; 
the tears started into my eyes; and I remained, for mo- 
ments after we had lost sight of the scene, in that de- 
licious absorption which pious enthusiasm alone can pro- 
duce. We arrived at the New Ladder and descended to 
the bottom. Here all its awful sublimities rushed full 
upon me. But the former exquisite sensation was gone. 
I now saw all. The string that had been touched by the 
first impulse, and which fancy would have kept for ever 
in vibration, now rested at reality. Yet, though there 
was no more to imagine, there was much to feel. My 
whole heart and soul ascended towards the Divinity in 
a swell of devout admiration, which I never before ex- 
perienced. Oh! bring the atheist here, and he cannot 
return an atheist! I pity the man who can coldly sit 
down to write a description of these ineffable wonders: 
much more do I pity him who can submit them to the 
admeasurement of gallons and yards. It is impossible by 
pen or pencil to convey even a faint idea of their mag- 
nificence. Painting is lifeless, and the most burning 
words of poetry have all been lavished upon inferior and 
ordinary subjects. We must have new combinations of 
language to describe the Fall of Niagara." 



[^t. 36] 

To Samuel Eggers 

[ MOORE AT WORK OX "laLLA ROOKH"] 

Mayfield: December 26, 1815. 
My dear Rogers, — 

As this is about the time you said you should be on 
your return to London, from your bright course through 
that noble zodiac you've been moving in, I hasten to wel- 
come you thither, not alas ! with my hand, as I could wish, 
— that joy must not be for a few months longer, — but 
with my warmest congratulations on your safe and sound 



130 THOMAS MOOKE [7FA. 3G 

roturn from the Continent, and hearty thanks for your 
kind roroll(K;ti<)ns of nio — recollections which 1 never want 
the outward and visible siji^n of letter-writing? to assure 
mo of, however delifj;htful and welcome it may be, in ad- 
dition to knowing that there's sweet music in the instru- 
ment, to hear a little of its melody now and then. This 
ima^e will not stand your criticism, but you know its 
meaning, and that's enough — much more indeed than we 
Irish image-makers can in general achieve. My desire to 
see you for yourself alone, is still more whetted by all I 
hear of the exquisite gleanings you have made on your 
tour. The Donegais say you have seen so nmch, seen 
everything so well, and describe it all so i)icturesquely, 
that there is nothing like the treat of hearing you talk 
of your travels — how I long for that treat I You are a 
hajjpy fellow, my dear Rogers, I know no one more nourri 
des jleurs of life, no one who lives so much "apis matinae 
more" as yourself. The great regret of my future days 
(and I hope the greatest) will be my loss of the oppor- 
tunity of seeing that glorious gallery, which like those 
"domes of Shadukiam and Amberabad," that Nourmahal 
saw in the "gorgeous clouds of the west," is now disi)ersed 
and gone for ever. It is a loss that never can bo reme- 
died; but still ])erhaps our sacrifices are among our pleas- 
antest recollcu'tions, and I ought not to feel sorry that 
the time and money, which would have procured for my- 
self this great gratification, have been employed in mak- 
ing other hearts happy, better hearts than mine, and bet- 
ter ha])])iness than that would have been. With respect 
to my Peris, thus stands the case, and remember that they 
are still to remain (where Peris best like to be) under the 
rose. I have nearly finished three tales, making, in all, 
about three thousand five hundred lines, but my plan is 
to have five tales, the stories of all which are arranged, 
and which I am determined to finish before I publish — 
no urgings nor wonderings nor tauntings shall induce me 
to lift the curtain till I have grouped these five subjects 
in the way I think best for variety and effect. I have 
already sulTerod enough by premature publication. I have 
formidable favourites to contend with, and must try to 
make up my deficiencies in da.sh and vigour by a greater 
degree, if possible, of versatility and polish. Now it will 



^t. 34] WASHINGTON IRVING 131 

take, at the least, six thousand lines to complete this plan, 
i.e., between two and three thousand more than I have 
yet done. By May next I expect to have five thousand 
finished. This is the number for which the Longmans 
stipulated, and accordingly in May I mean to appear in 
London, and nominally deliver the work into their hands. 
It would be then too late (even if all were finished) to 
think of going to press; so that I shall thus enjoy the 
credit with the Literary Quidnuncs of having completed 
my task, together with the advantage of the whole sum- 
mer before me to extend it to the length I purpose. Such 
is the statement of my thousands, &c., which I am afraid 
you will find as puzzling as a speech of Mr. Vansittart's ; 
but it is now near twelve o'clock at night, which being 
an hour later than our cottage rules allow, I feel it im- 
possible to be luminous any longer — in which tendency 
to eclipse, my candle sympathises most gloomily. 

Your poor friend Psyche is by no means well. I was 
in hopes that our Irish trip would have benefited her; 
but her weakness and want of appetite continue most dis- 
tressingly, and our cold habitation in the fields has now 
given her a violent cough, which if it does not soon get 
better, will alarm me exceedingly. I never love her so 
well as when she is ill, which is perhaps the best proof 
how really 1 love her. How do Byron and my Lady go 
on? there are strange rumours in the country ahout them. 
Ever yours, my dear Rogers, 
Thomas Moore. 



[^t. 34] WASHINGTON IRVING 

1783-1S59 

To His Brother, Peter Irving 

[a visit to sir avalter scott] 

Abbotsford, September 1, 1817. 
My dear Brother: 

I have barely time to scrawl a line before the gossoon 
goes off with the letters to the neighboring post-office. 

I was disappointed in my expectation of meeting with 
Dugald Stewart at Mr. Jeffrey's; some circumstance pre- 
vented his coming; though we had Mrs. and Miss Stew- 



132 WASHINGTON lEVING [^t. 34: 

art. The party, however, was very agreeable and inter- 
esting. Lady Davy was in excellent spirits, and talked 
like an angel. In the evening, when we collected in the 
drawing-room, she held forth for upwards of an hour; 
the company drew round her and seemed to listen in 
mute pleasure; even Jeffrey seemed to keep his colloquial 
powers in check to give her full chance. She reminded 
me of the picture of the Minister Bird with all the birds 
of the forest perched on the surrounding branches in 
listening attitudes. I met there with Lord Webb Sey- 
mour, brother to the Duke of Somerset. He is almost a 
constant resident of Edinburgh. He was very attentive 
to me; wrote down a route for me in the Highlands, and 
called on me the next morning, when he detailed the route 
more particularly. I have promised to see him when I 
return to Edinburgh, which promise I shall keep, as I 
like him much. 

On Friday, in spite of sullen, gloomy weather, I 
mounted the top of the mail coach, and rattled oft' to Sel- 
kirk. It rained heavily in the course of the afternoon, 
and drove me inside. On Saturday morning early I took 
chaise for Melrose; and on ^the way stopped at the gate 
of Abbotsford, and sent in my letter of introduction, with 
a request to know whether it would be agreeable for Mr. 
Scott to receive a visit from me in the course of the day. 
The glorious old minstrel himself came limping to the 
gate, took me by the hand in a way that made me feel as 
if we were old friends; in a moment I was seated at his 
hospitable board among his charming little family, and 
here have I been ever since. I had intended certainly 
being back to Edinburgh to-day (Monday), but Mr. Scott 
wishes me to stay until Wednesday, that we may make 
excursions to Dryburgh Abbey, Yarrow, &c., as the 
weather has held up and the sun begins to shine. I can- 
not tell you how truly I have enjoyed the hours I have 
passed here. They fly by too quick, yet each is loaded with 
story, incident, or song; and when I consider the world 
of ideas, images, and impressions that have been crowded 
upon my mind since I have been here, it seems incredi- 
ble that I should only have been two days at Abbotsford. 
I have rambled about the hills with Scott; visited the 
haunts of Thomas the Rhymer, and other spots rendered 



^t. 34] WASHINGTON IRVING 135 

classic by border tale and witching song, and have been 
in a kind of dream or delirium. 

As to Scott, I cannot express my delight at his charac- 
ter and manners. He is a sterling golden -hearted old 
worthy, full of the joyousness of youth, with an imagina- 
tion continually furnishing forth picture, and a charm- 
ing simplicity of manner that puts you at ease with him 
in a moment. It has been a constant source of pleasure 
to me to remark his deportment towards his family, his 
neighbors, his domestics, his very dogs and cats; every- 
thing that comes within his influence seems to catch a 
beam of that sunshine that plays round his heart; but I 
shall say more of him hereafter, for he is a theme on 
which I shall love .to dwell. 

Before I left Edinburgh I saw Blackwood in his shop. 
It was accidental — my conversing with him. He found 
out who I was; is extremely anxious to make an Ameri- 
can arrangement ; wishes to get me to write for his Maga- 
zine; (the "Edinburdi Monthly.") Wishes to introduce 
me to Mackenzie, Wilson, &c. Constable called on me 
just before I left town. He had been in the country and 
just returned. He was very friendly in his manner. Lord 
Webb Seymour's coming in interrupted us, and Consta- 
ble took leave. I promised to see him on my return to 
Edinburgh. He is about regenerating the old ''Edin- 
burgh Magazine," and has got Blackwood's editors away 
from him in consequence of some feud they had with, 
him. ... 

Commend me to Hamilton. I hope to hear from him. 
soon, and shall write to him again. 

Your affectionate brother, 

W. I. 

P. S. — This morning we ride to Dryburgh Abbey and 
see also the old Earl of Buchan — who, you know, is a 
queer one. 



134 WASHINGTON IRVING [^t. 41 

[^t. 41] 

To Thomas Moore 

[KENNEY; ROGERS; LORD BYROX's "lIFE"] 

Brighton, August 14, 1824. 

My boat is on the shore 
And my bark is on the sea ; 

I forget how the song ends, but here I am at Brighton 
just on the point of embarking for France. I have dragged 
myself out of London as a horse drags himself out of the 
slough or a fly out of a honey pot, almost leaving a limb 
behind him at every tug. Not that I have been immersed 
in pleasure and surrounded by sweets, but rather up to 
the ears in ink and harassed by printers' devils. 

I never have had such fagging in altering, adding, and 
correcting; and I have been detained beyond all patience 
by the delays of the press. Yesterday I absolutely broke 
away, without waiting for the last sheets. They are to 
be sent after me here by mail to be corrected this morn- 
ing, or else they must take their chance. From the time 
I first started pen in hand on this work,* it has been 
nothing but hard driving with me. 

I have not been able to get to Tunbridge to see the 
Donegals, which I really and greatly regret. Indeed I 
have seen nobody except a friend or two, who had the 
kindness to hunt me out. Among these was Mr. Story, 
and I ate a dinner there that it took me a week to digest, 
having been obliged to swallow so much hard-favored 
nonsense from a loud-talking baronet whose name, thank 
God, I forget, but who maintained Byron was not a man 
of courage, and therefore his poetry was not readable. I 
was really afraid he would bring John Story to the same 
way of thinking. 

I went a few evenings since to see Kenney's new piece, 
the Alcaid. It went off lamely, and the Alcaid is rather 
a bore,, and comes near to be generally thought so. Poor 
Kenney came to my room next evening, and I could not 
have believed that one night could have ruined a man 
so completely. I swear to you I thought at first it was a 
flimsy suit of clothes had left some bedside and walked 

* Tales of a Traveller. 



^t. 41] WASHINGTON lEVING 135 

into my room without waiting for the owner to get up; 
or that it was one of those frames on which clothiers 
stretch coats at their shop doors; until I perceived a thin 
face sticking edgeways out of the collar of the coat like 
the axe in a bundle of fasces. He was so thin, and pale, 
and nerv'ous, and exhausted — he made a dozen difficulties 
in getting over a spot in the carpet, and never would have 
accomplished it if he had not lifted himself over by the 
points of his shirt collar. 

I saw Rogers just as I was leaving town. He told me 
he had seen you, and that the christening was soon to 
take place. 

I had not time to ask Rogers any particulars about you, 
and indeed he is not exactly the man from whom I would 
ask news about my friends. I dined fete-a-tete with him 
some time since, and he served up his friends as he served 
up his fish, with a squeeze of lemon over each. It was 
very piquant, but it rather set my teeth on edge. 

I hope you are working at Lord Byron's life. Sheri- 
dan's can keep without disadvantage, but now is the 
time to work at Lord B. so as to bring it out before the 
interest shall have died away, or that others shall have 
usurped the public mind with respect to him. 

I met Mrs. Brannegan one evening at the opera, and 
on parting inquired her address. I was too busy to call 
for a day or two, and made my call the very day she had 
departed. 

Farewell, my dear Moore. Let me hear from you, if 
but a line; particularly if my work pleases you, but don't 
say a word against it. I am easily put out of humor with 
what I do. Give as much love to Mrs. Moore as it is re- 
spectable in a husband to countenance, and tell her I have 
ordered a copy of my work to be sent to her. 

Yours ever, 

Washington Irving. 



136 WASHINGTON IKVING [^t. 48 

[^t. 48] 

To Mrs. Paris 
[CHRISTMAS festivities; newstead abbey] 

Newstead Abbey, Jan. 20, 1832. 
My dear Sister: 

Upwards of a month since I left London with Mr. Van 
Buren and his son, on a tour to show them some interest- 
ing places in the interior, and to give them an idea of 
English country life, and the festivities of an old-fash- 
ioned English Christmas. We posted in an open carriage, 
as the weather w^as uncommonly mild and beautiful for 
the season. Our first stopping place was Oxford, to visit 
the noble collegiate buildings; thence we went to Blen- 
heim, and visited the seat of the Duke of Marlborough, 
one of the finest places in England. We next passed a 
night and part of the next day at Stratford-on-Avon, 
visiting the house where Shakespeare was bom and the 
church where he lies buried. We were quartered at the 
little inn of the Red Horse, where I found the same 
obliging little landlady that kept it at the time of the 
visit recorded in the Sketch Book. You cannot imagine 
what a fuss the little woman made when she found out 
who I was. She showed me the room I had occupied, in 
which she had hung up my engraved likeness, and she 
produced a poker which was locked up in the archives of 
her house, on which she had caused to be engraved, 
''Geoffrey Crayon's Sceptre." From Stratford we went 
to Warwick Castle, Kenilworth, and then to Birming- 
ham, where we passed a part of three days, dining at 
Van Wart's; continuing our tour we visited Lichfield 
and its beautiful cathedral, Derby, Nottingham, New- 
stead Abbey, Hardwick Castle, &c., &c., and finally ar- 
rived on Christmas eve at Barlborough Hall, where we 
had engaged to remain during the holidays. Here, then, 
we passed a fortnight, during which the old hall was a 
complete scene of old English hospitality. Many of the 
ancient games and customs, obsolete in other parts of 
England, are still maintained in that part of the coun- 
try, and are encouraged by Mr. Rodes. We accordingly 
had mummers, and morris dancers, and glee singers from 
the neighboring villages; and great feasting, with the 



^t. 48] WASHINGTON IRVING 137 

boar's head crowned with holly; the wassail bowl, the 
yule clog, snap dragon, &c., &c. There was dancing by 
night in the grand tapestried apartments, and dancing in 
the servants' hall, and all kinds of merriment. The whole 
was to have wound up by a grand fancy ball on Twelfth 
Night to which all the gentry of the neighborhood were 
invited, when Mr. Rodes received news of the death of a 

relative, which put an end to the festivities 

After leaving the hospitable mansion of Mr. Rodes we 
came to Newstead Abbey on an invitation from Col. Wild- 
man, the present proprietor. Mr. Van Buren and his son 
remained but a couple of days, but I was easily prevailed 
upon to prolong my visit, and have now been here about 
a fortnight; and never has time passed away more de- 
lightfully. I have found Col. Wildman a most estimable 
man, warm-hearted, generous, and amiable, and his wife 
charming both in character and person. The abbey I 
have already mentioned to you in a former letter as being 
the ancestral mansion of Lord Byron, and mentioned fre- 
quently in his writings. I occupy his room, and the very 
bed in which he slept. The edifice is a fine mixture of 
the convent and the palace, being an ancient abbey of 
friars granted by Henry VIII. to the Byron family. At 
one end is the ruin of the abbey church ; the Gothic front 
still standing in fine preservation and overrun w^ith ivy. 
My room immediately adjoins it, and hard by is a dark 
grove filled with rooks, who are continually wheeling and 
cawing about the building. What was once the interior 
of the church is now a grassy lawn with gravel walks, 
and where the high altar stood, is the monument erected 
by Lord Byron to his dog, in which he intended his own 
body should be deposited. The interior of the abbey is 
a complete labyrinth. There are the old monkish clois- 
ters, dim and damp, surrounding a square, in the centre 
of which is a grotesque Gothic fountain. Then there are 
long corridors hung with portraits, and set out with 
figures in armor, that look like spectres. There are an- 
cient state apartments that have been occupied by some 
of the British sovereigns in their progresses, and which 
still bear their names. These have been restored by Col. 
Wildman with great taste, and are hung with ancient 
tapestry, and quaintly furnished. There are large halls. 



138 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y [.Et. 60 

also, some splendidly restored, others undergoing repairs; 
with long vaulted chambers that have served for refec- 
tories and dormitories to the monks in old times. Behind 
the edifice is the ancient abbey garden, with great ter- 
raced walks, balustrades, fish ponds, formal flower plots, 
&c., all kept up in admirable style, and suiting the vener- 
able appearance of the building. You may easily imagine 
the charms of such a residence connected with the poeti- 
cal associations with the memory of Lord Byron. The 
solemn and monastic look of many parts of the edifice, 
also, has a most myst6rious and romantic effect, and has 
given rise to many superstitious fables among the serv- 
ants and the neighboring peasantry. They have a story 
of a friar in black who haunts the cloisters, and is said 
to have been seen by Lord Byron. He certainly alludes 
to him in his poems. Then there is a female in white, 
who appeared in the bedroom of a young lady, a cousin 
of Lord Byron, coming through the wall on one side of 
the room, and going into the wall on the other side. Be- 
sides these there is "Sir John Byron, the little, with the 
great beard," the first proprietor of the abbey, whose por- 
trait in black hangs up in the drawing room. He has 
been seen by a young lady visitor, sitting by the fireplace 
of one of the state apartments reading out of a great 
book. I could mention other stories of the kind, but 
these are sufiicient to show you that this old building is 

more than usually favored by ghosts 

Ever most affectionately your brother, 

W. I. 

[^t. 60] THOMAS DE QUINCEY 

1785-1859 

To A Friend 

[the "hideous ixcubus" upon his mind] 

[1845 ?] 
With respect to my book ["The Logic of Political 
Economy," which appeared in 1844], which perhaps by 
this time you and Professor Nichol will have received 
through the publishers, I have a word to say. Upon some 
of the distinctions there contended for it would be false 
humility if I should doubt they are sound. The sub- 



Mt 60] THOMAS DE QUINCEY 139 

stance, I am too well assured, is liable to no dispute. But 
as to the method of presenting the distinctions, as to the 
composition of the book, and the whole evolution of a 
course of thinking, there it is that I too deeply recognise 
the mind affected by my morbid condition. Through that 
ruin, and by help of that ruin, I looked into and read the 
latter states of Coleridge. His chaos I comprehended by 
the darkness of my own, and both were the work of lauda- 
num. It is as if ivory carvings and elaborate fretwork 
• and fair enamelling should be found with worms and 
ashes amongst coffins and the wrecks of some forgotten 
life or some abolished nature. In parts and fractions 
eternal creations are carried on, but the nexus is want- 
ing, and life and the central principle which should bind 
together all the parts at the centre, with all its radiations 
to the circumference, are wanting. Infinite incoherence, 
ropes of sand, gloomy incapacity of vital pervasion by 
some one plastic principle, that is the hideous incubus 
upon my mind always. For there is no disorganised 
wreck so absolute, so perfect, as that which is wrought 
by misery. 

Misery is a strong word ; and I would not have molested 
your happiness by any such gloomy reference, were it not 
that I did really, and in solemn earnest, regard my con- 
dition in that same hopeless light as I did until lately. 
I had one sole glimmer of hope, and it was this — that 
laudanum might be the secret key to all this wretched- 
ness, not utterable to any human ear, which for ever I 
endured. Upon this subject the following is my brief 
record. On leaving Glasgow in the first week of June, 
1843, I was as for two years you had known me. Why I 
know not, but for some cause during the summer months 
the weight of insufferable misery and mere abhorrence 
of life increased ; but also it fluctuated. A conviction fell 
upon me that immense exercise might restore me. But 
you will imagine my horror when, with that conviction, 
I found, precisely in my earliest efforts, my feet gave 
way, and the misery in all its strength came back. Every 
prospect I had of being laid up as a cripple for life. 
Much and deeply I pondered on this, and I gathered my- 
self up as if for a final effort. For if that fate were estab- 
lished, farewell I felt for me to all hope of restoration. 



140 THOMAS DE QUINCEY [.^t. 60 

Eternally the words sounded in my ears: "Suffered and 
was buried." Unless that one effort which I planned and 
determined, as often you see a prostrate horse "biding 
his time" and reserving- his strength for one mighty 
struggle, too surely I believed that for me no ray of light 
would ever shine again. The danger was, that at first 
going off on exercise the inflamm.ation should come on; 
that, if then I persisted, the inflammation would settle 
into the bones, and the case become desperate. It mat- 
ters not to trouble you with the details — the result was 
this : — I took every precaution known to the surgical skill 
of the neighbourhood. Within a measured space of forty- 
four yards in circuit, so that forty rounds were exactly 
required for one mile, I had within ninety days walked 
a thousand miles. And so far I triumphed. But because 
still I was irregular as to laudanum, this also I reformed. 
For six months no result; one dreary uniformity of re- 
port — absolute desolation ; misery so perfect that too 
surely I perceived, and no longer disguised from myself, 
the impossibility of continuing to live under so profound 
a blight. I now kept my journal as one who in a desert 
island is come to his last day's provisions. On Friday 
the 23d of February, I might say for the first time, in 
scriptural words, "And the man was sitting clothed and in 
his right mind." That is not too strong an expression. 
I had known all along, and too ominously interpreted the 
experience from the fact, that I was not in my perfect 
mind. Lunacy causes misery; the border is sometimes 
crossed, and too often that is the order of succession. But 
also misery, and above all physical misery, working by 
means of intellectual remembrances and persecution of 
thoughts, no doubt sometimes inversely causes lunacy. 
To that issue I felt that all things tended. You may 
guess, therefore, the awe that fell upon me, when, not by 
random accident, capable of no theory on review, but in 
consequence of one firm system pursued through eight 
months as to one element, and nearly three as to another, 
I recovered in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, such 
a rectification of the compass as I had not known for 
years. It is true that this frame departed from me within 
forty-eight hours; but that no way alarmed me — I drew 
hope from the omen. It is as if a man had been in a 



JEt. 60] THOMAS DE QUINCEY 141 

wKirlpool, carried violently by a headlong current, and 
before he could speak or think, he was riding as if at 
anchor, once more dull and untroubled, as in days of in- 
fancy. The current caught me again; and the old suffer- 
ings in degree came back, as I have said. There is some- 
thing shocking and generally childish, by too obvious 
associations, in any suggestions of suicide ; but too certain- 
ly I felt that to this my condition tended; for again enor- 
mous irritability was rapidly travelling over the disk of 
my life, and this, and the consciousness of increasing 
weakness, added to my desolation of heart. I felt that no 
man could continue to struggle. Coleridge had often 
spoken to me of the dying away from him of all hope; 
not meaning, as I rightly understood him, the hope that 
forms itself as a distant look out into the future, but of 
the gladsome vital feelings that are born of the blood, 
and make the goings-on of life pleasurable. 

Then I partly understood him, now perfectly; and lay- 
ing all things together, I returned obstinately to the be- 
lief that laudanum was at the root of all this unimagina- 
ble hell. Why then not, if only by way of experiment, 
leave it off? Alas! that had become impossible. Then I 
descended to a hundred drops. Effects so dreadful and 
utterly unconjectured by medical men succeeded that I 
was glad to get back under shelter. Not the less I per- 
sisted; silently, surely, descended the ladder, and, as I 
have said, suddenly found my mind as if whirled round 
on its true centre. A line of Wordsworth's about Ger- 
many I remembered: — 

"All power was given her in the dreadful trance." 

Such was my sense: illimitable seemed the powers re- 
stored to me; and now, having tried the key, and found 
it the true key, even though a blast of wind has blown 
the door to again, no jot of spirits was gone away from 
me: I shall arise as one risen from the dead. 

This long story I have told you, because nothing short 
of this could explain my conduct, past, present, and fu- 
ture. And thus far there is an interest for all the world 
— that I am certain of this, viz., that misery is the talis- 
man by which man communicates with the world outside 
of our fleshly world. 



[^t. 32] BENJAMIN EGBERT HAYDON 

1786-1846 

To John Keats 

[recovering chapman's homer] 

My dear Keats, 

When I called the other morning" I did not know your 
poems were out, or I should have read them before I 
came, in order to tell you my opinion. I have done so 
since, and really I cannot tell you how very highly I esti- 
mate them. They justify the assertions of all your friends 
regarding your poetical powers. I can assure you, what- 
• ever you may do, you will not exceed my opinion of them. 
Have you done with Chapman's "Homer"? I want it 
very badly at this moment. Will you let the bearer have 
it, as well as let me know how you are ? 

I am, dear Keats, ever yours, 
B. R. Haydon. 

[^t. 35] 

To Miss Mitiord 

. ["poor dear KEATS !"] 

21st April, 1821. 
.... Keats was a victim to personal abuse and 
want of nerve to bear it. Ought he to have sunk in that 
way because a few quizzers told him that he was an 
apothecary s apprentice? A genius more purely poetical 
never existed! In conversation he was nothing, or if 
anythnig weak and inconsistent; he had an exquisite 
sense of humour, but it was in the fields Keats was in 
his glory. ... His ruin was owing to his want of 
decision of character and power of will, without which 
genius IS a curse. He could not bring his mind to bear 
on one object, and was at the mercy of every pretty theorv 
-Leigh Hunts ingenuity would suggest. ... He had a 
tending to religion when first I knew him, but Leigh Hunt 
soon forced it from his mind. Never shall I forget Keat^ 
once rising from his chair and approaching my last pic- 
ture ( Entry into Jerusalem") ; he went before the por- 

142 



.Et. 35] BENJAMI^T ROBEKT HAYDON 143 

trait of Voltaire, placed his hand on his heart and bow- 
ing low 

". . . . In reverence done, as to the power 
That dwelt within, whose presence had infused 
Into the plant sciential sap, derived 
From nectar, drink of gods," 

as Milton says of Eve after she had eaten the apple. 
"That's the being to whom I bend," said he, alluding to 
the bending of the other figures in the picture, and con- 
trasting Voltaire with our Saviour, and his own adora- 
tion to that of the crowd. Leigh Hunt was the great un- 
hinger of his best dispositions. Latterly, Keats saw Leigh 
Hunt's weakness. I distrusted his leader, but Keats would 
not cease to visit him because he thought Hunt illused. 
This showed Keats's goodness of heart. 

He began life full of hope, and his brother told me 
that he recounted with pride and delight the opinion we 
had expressed of his powers the first morning he had 
breakfasted with me. Fiery, impetuous, ungovernable, 
and undecided, he expected the world to bow at once to 
his talents as his friends had done, and he had not patience 
to bear the natural irritation of envy at the undoubted 
proof he gave of strength. Goaded by ridicule, he dis- 
trusted himself, and flew to dissipation. For six weeks 
he was hardly ever sober, and to show you what a man of 
genius does when his passions are roused, he told me that 
he once covered his tongue and throat, as far as he could 
reach, with cayenne pepper in order to enjoy the "delicious 
coolness of claret in all its glory." This was his own ex- 
pression. 

The death of his brother wounded him deeply, and it 
appeared to me from that hour he began to droop. He 
wrote his exquisite ''Ode to the Nightingale" at this time, 
and as we were one evening walking in the Kilburn 
meadows he repeated it to me, before he put it to paper, 
in a low, tremulous under-tone which aifected me ex- 
tremely. He had great enthusiasm for me and so had I 
for him, but he grew angry latterly because I shook my 
head at his proceedings. I told him, I begged of him to 
bend his genius to some definite object. I remonstrated on 



144 BENJAMIX EGBERT HAYDON [.Et. 39 

his absurd dissipation, but to no purpose. The last time I 
saw him was at Hampstead, lying- on his back in a white 
bed, helpless, irritable, and hectic. He had a book, and 
enraged at his own feebleness, seemed as if he were going 
out of the world with a contempt for this, and no hopes 
of a better. He muttered as I stood by him that if he 
did not recover he would "cut his throat." I tried to 
calm him, but to no purpose. I left him in great de- 
pression of spirit to see him in such a state. Poor dear 
Keats ! 



[^t. 37] 

To Miss Mitford 
[a robix] 

7th November, 1823. 
. . . The other day, w^iile Frank was lying on his bed 
in the nursery, a little robin hopped in. I caught it, 
caged it, and after a day or two it began to "dit! dit!" 
This note seized hold of the boy's imagination; and last 
night when, like a good old papa, I got out in the dark 
to give him something to drink, the instant he felt my 
rough hand, which he knew was not his mother's, after 
he had satisfied his thirst, he pressed his cheek against 
my hand — half-asleep as he was — and in a small treble 
voice, like a flageolet, said "Dittey!" .with a sort of spark- 
ling chuckle. Is he not a darling? It was so cheerful, in 
the midst of a dark night, when most children would have 
cried, that, I privately tell you — at which you must not 
laugh — I hugged him well. 

[^t. 39] 

To Miss Mitford 
[Coleridge; a sarcophagus; sir johx soane] 

28th March, 1825. 
... I was at Soane's last night to see this sarcoph- 
agus by lamp-light. The first person I met, after sev- 
enteen years, was Coleridge, silver-haired! He looked at 
my bald front, and I at his hair, with mutual looks of 
sympathy and mutual headshaking. It aifected me very 



^t. 39] BENJAMIN EGBERT HAYDON 145 

much, and so it seemed to affect him. I did not know what 
to say, nor did he; and then in his chanting way, half- 
poetical, half-inspired, half-idiotic, he began to console 
me by trying to prove that the only way for a man of 
genius to be happy was just to put forth no more power 
than was sufficient for the purposes of the age in which 
he lived, as if genius was a power one could fold up like 
a parasol! At this moment over came Spurzheim, with 
his German simplicity, and shaking my hand: "How doe 
you doe? Vy, your organs are more parfaite den eaver. 
How luckee you lose your hair. Veel you pearmeet me 
to eintrowdooze you to Mrs. Spurzheim?" I was pushed 
against Turner, the landscape painter, with his red face 
and white waistcoat, and before I could see Mrs. Spurz- 
heim, was carried off my legs, and irretrievably bustled 
to where the sarcophagus lay. 

Soane's house is a perfect Cretan labyrinth: curious 
narrow staircases, landing places, balconies, spring doors, 
and little rooms filled with fragments to the very ceiling. 
It was the finest fun imaginable to see the people come 
into the library after wandering about below, amidst 
tombs and capitals, and shafts, and noiseless heads, with 
a sort of expression of delighted relief at finding them- 
selves again among the living, and with coffee and cake! 
They looked as if they were pleased to feel their blood 
circulate once more, and w^ent smirking up to Soane, 
"lui faisant leurs compliments," with a twisting chuckle 
of features as if grateful for their escape. Fancy deli- 
cate ladies of fashion dipping their pretty heads into an 
old mouldy, fusty, hieroglyphicked coffin, blessing their 
stars at its age, wondering whom it contained, and whis- 
pering that it was mentioned in Pliny. You can imagine 
the associations connected with such contrasts. Just as 
I was beginning to meditate, the Duke of Sussex, with 
a star on his breast, and an asthma inside it, came squeez- 
ing and wheezing along the narrow passage, driving all 
the women before him like a Blue-Beard, and putting 
his royal head into the coffin, added his wonder to the 
wonder of the rest. Upstairs stood Soane, spare, thin, 
caustic, and starched, "mocking the thing he laughed at," 
as he smiled approbation for the praises bestowed on his 
magnificent house. . . . Coleridge said, 'T have a great 



146 BENJAMIN EGBERT HAYDON [^t. 40 

contempt for these Eg5i)tians with all their learning. 
After all, what did it amount to, but a bad system of 
astronomy?" "What do you think of this house, Mr. 
Haydon?" said that dandy, , to me. "Very interest- 
ing," I said. "Very interesting," he replied, with a spar- 
kle in his eye denoting an occult meaning he was too 
polite to express. "Very curious, is it not?" "Very curi- 
ous," I echoed. "Very kind of Mr. Soane to open the 
house so." "Very kind," I replied, as grave as the Chan- 
cellor, seeing that he was dying *to say something which 
would come out if I pretended ignorance. "Rather odd, 
though, stuck about so." I smiled. "However, it is very 
kind of Soane, you know, but it's a funny house, and 

a " Just then, Soane was elbowed against him, and 

both making elegant bows to each other, — expressed his 
thanks to Soane for "admitting him to the enjoyment of 
such a splendid treat," &c., &c., — and he went off with 
Soane downstairs, talking of the Egyptians with all the 
solemnity of deep learning and of a profound interest 
in his subject. 

As I looked at Soane, smiling and flushed by flattery, 
I thought of Johnson at Ranelagh. "There was not a 
soul then around him who would not, ere they put on 
their night-caps, envy him his assemblage of rank, and 
talent, and fashion; sneer at his antiques, quiz his coffee, 
and go to sleep, pitjdng with affected superiority his de- 
lusion and vanity." But Soane is a good though caustic 
man. . . . And now I must go and paint the carpet my 
sitter stands on; so adieu to human nature, and let me 
paint with all my power the colour and the texture of a 
Brussels bit. 

Ever sincerely yours, 
B. R. Haydon. 
[^t. 40] 

To Miss Mitford 
[ax appreciative butcher] 

18th August, 1826. 

How do you find yourself? I heard you were poorly. 

What are you about ? I was happy to hear of 's safe 

arrival again, and I shall be most happy to see him, 
though tell him he will find no more "Solomons" tower- 



^t. 40] BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON 147 

ing up as a background to our conversations. Nothing 
but genteel-sized drawing-room pocket-history — Alexander 
in a nutshell ; Bucephalus no bigger than a Shetland pony, 
and my little girl's doll a giantess to my Olympias! 

The other night I paid my butcher; one of the miracles 
of these times, you will say. Let me tell you I have all 
my life been seeking for a butcher whose respect for 
genius predominated over his love of gain. I could not 
make out, before I dealt with this man, his excessive de- 
sire that I should be his customer; his sly hints as I 
passed his shop that he had "a bit of South Down, very 
fine; a sweetbread, perfection; and a calf's foot that was 
all jelly without bone!" The other day he called, and I 
had him sent up into the painting-room. I found him 
in great admiration of "Alexander." "Quite alive, Sir!" 
"I am glad you think so," said I. "Yes, Sir; but, as I 
have said often to my sister, you could not have painted 
that picture. Sir, if you had not eat my meat, Sir!" 
"Very true, Mr. Sowerby." "Ah! Sir, I have a fancy for 
genus, Sir!" "Have you, Mr. Sowerby?" "Yes, Sir; 
Mrs. Siddons, Sir, has eat my meat, Sir; never was such 
a woman for chops, Sir!" — and he drew up his beefy, 
shiny face, clean shaved, with a clean blue cravat under 
his chin, a clean jacket, a clean apron, and a pair of hands 
that would pin an ox to the earth if he was obstreper- 
ous — "Ah! Sir, she was a wonderful crayture!" "She 
■was, Mr. Sowerby." "Ah! Sir, when she used to act that 
there character, you see (but Lord, such a head! as I say 
to my sister) — that there woman. Sir, that murders a 
king between 'em!" "Oh! Lady Macbeth." "Ah, Sir, 
that's it — Lady Macbeth — I used to get up with the but- 
ler behind her carriage when she acted, and, as I used to 
see her looking quite wild, and all the people quite fright- 
ened, 'Ah, ha ! my lady,' says I, 'if it wasn't for my meat, 
though, you wouldn't be able to do that!'" "Mr. Sow- 
erby, you seem to be a man of feeling; will you take a 
glass of wine?" After a bow or two, down he sat, and 
by degrees his heart opened. "You see, Sir, I have fed 
Mrs. Siddons, Sir; John Kemble, Sir; Charles Kemble, 
Sir; Stephen Kemble, Sir; and Madame Catalani, Sir; 
Morland the painter, and, I beg your pardon, Sir, and 
you, Sir." "Mr. Sowerby, you do* me honour." "Madame 



148 BENJAMIN EOBEET HAYDON [^t. 42 

Catalan!, Sir, was a wonderful woman for sweetbreads; 
but the Kemble family, Sir, the gentlemen. Sir, rump- 
steaks and kidneys in general was their taste; but Mrs. 
Siddons, Sir, she liked chops, Sir, as much as you do. 
Sir," &c., &c. I soon perceived that the man's ambition 
was to feed genius. I shall recommend you to him; but 
is he not a capital fellow? But a little acting with his 
remarks would make you roar with laughter. Think of 
Lady Macbeth eating chops ! Is not this a peep behind the 
curtain ? I remember Wilkie saying that at a public din- 
ner he was looking out for some celebrated man, when at 
last he caught a glimpse for the first time of a man whose 
books he had read with care for years, picking the leg of 
a roast goose, perfectly abstracted ! 

. . . Never will I bring up my boys to any profes- 
sion that is not a matter of necessary want to the world. 
Painting, unless considered as it ought to be, is a mere 
matter of ornament and luxury. It is not yet taken up 
as it should be in a wealthy country like England, and 
all those who devote themselves to the higher branches of 
Art must suffer the penalty, as I have done and am doing. 

So I was told, and to no purpose. I opposed my father, 
my mother, and my friends, though I am duly gratified 
by my fame in observant corners. Last week a bookstall 
keeper showed me one of my own books at his stall, and, 
by way of recommending it, pointed out a sketch of my 
own on the fly-leaf, "Which," said he, "I suppose is by 
Haydon himself. Ah ! Sir, he was badly used — a disgrace 
to our great men." "But he was imprudent," said I. 
"Imprudent!" said he. "Yes, of course; he depended 
on their taste and generosity too much." "Have you any 
more of his books?" said I. "Oh! I had a great many; 
but I have sold them all. Sir, but this, and another that 
I will never part with." 

[^t. 42] 

To Miss Mitford 
[experiexces at stratford-on-avon] 

31st August, 1828. 

I have been longing to write to you since I made a 

pilgrimage to Stratford. Shakespeare may or may not 



.Et. 42] BENJAMIN EGBERT HAYDON 149 

have been born in the room shown; but his father can be 
proved to have bought the house in 1574, ten years after. 
It may therefore be justly inferred, in the absence of 
proof that he lived anywhere else in the interval, that he 
lived here, and that his son was born here ten years be- 
fore he made his purchase ; and as people, except on singu- 
lar emergencies, are generally born upstairs, Shakespeare 
may have given his first puling cry in the long, low old 
room still pointed out. But at his grave all doubt van- 
ishes. You stand on the tombstone with the inscription 
he himself wrote while living; you read his pathetic en- 
treaty and blessing on the reader who revered his re- 
mains, and curses on him who dared to touch; you see 
his-bust put up by his daughter; you hear the very breez- 
ing of the trees he himself heard, and listen to the hum- 
ming watery ripple of the river he must often have en- 
joyed. The most poetical imagination could not have 
conceived a burial-place more English, more Shakespear- 
ian. As I stood and looked up at the unaffected bust, 
which bears evidence in the exquisite smile when seen in 
profile of being authentic, and thought I was standing 
where Shakespeare had often been, I was deeply touched. 
The church alone, from the seclusion of situation, with 
the trees, the river, the tombs, was enough to make one 
poetical; but add to this, that the remains of Shake- 
speare, prostrate and silent, were lying near me, in a 
grave he had himself selected, in a church where he had 
often prayed, and with an epitaph he had himself written 
while living, it was impossible to say where on the face 
of the earth could an Englishman be more affected, or 
feel deeper or mor.e touching sensations. I would not 
have bartered my associations at this unaffected, seques- 
tered tomb of Stratford for all the classical delights of 
the Troad, the Acropolis, or Marathon. The old clerk, 
seeing me abstracted, opened the door that led to the 
churchyard close to the river, and left me to myself. I 
walked out, and lounging down to the Avon looked back 
on the church. The sun was setting behind me, and a 
golden light and shadow glittered on the glazed Gothic 
windows; and as the trees waved tenderly backwards and 
forwards, what dazzled your eyes one moment was ob- 
scured by the foliage the next, and a burnished splendour 



150 BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON [^t. 42 

and embrowned shadow kept shifting lazily. I was so 
close that the steeple towered up against the sky like the 
mast of some mighty vessel you pass under at sea. ^ I 
stood and drank in all that an enthusiastic human being 
could feel, all that the most ardent and devoted lover of 
a great genius could have a sensation of, and all that 
river, tree, or sunset could excite in addition. I was 
quite lost; and returned to my inn disgusted at the 
thoughts of food and waiters, and would willingly, if my 
Creator had so pleased, have -aken my flight to a purer 
being of "calm pleasures oi majestic pains." When I 
got to bed I could not sleep. I tumbled about, fancied 
the pillow hard, the bed badly made, the sheets damp, and 
then I sat up an(i punched the pillow as I have seen 
chambermaids do; but it was all to no purpose; and at 
daybreak I got up in a heat of eagerness and restless fid- 
get to get to Charlecote. I put the whole house in an 
uproar; got an early breakfast, and started oif for the 
Lucys' place as fast as my legs would carry me.^ My 
walking is no joke, as you know, and this morning I 
would have defied Barclay. I met a sturdy gipsy, and 
after I had passed him, remembered that I might as well 
ask the way to Charlecote. "Right across the corn-field, 
Sir, and it will bring you to the back-way." I darted 
into the pathway, and coming to a swinging gate, pushed 
it open, and in a moment was inside an ancient park. 
Trees — full, tall, gigantic and umbrageous — announced 
the growth, indeed, of centuries. As I strolled along I 
caught a glimpse of the old red-bricked house, and going 
close to the river side came at once to two enormous wil- 
lows branching aslant the stream, such as Ophelia hung 
to. Every blade of grass, every daisy and cowslip, every 
hedge and peeping flower, every tuft of tawny earth, every 
rustling and enormous tree casting its cool gigantic 
shadow on the sunny park, while the sheep dotted about 
on the glittering green where the sun streaked in, an- 
nounced where Shakespeare imbibed his early deep and 
native taste for landscape scenery and for.est solitude. 
They spoke to me as if Shakespeare was whispering in 
my ear. They looked as if his name was stamped by 
nature on their flowers and leaves in glittering dewdrops, 
or gorgeous colour. 



^t. 42] BEXJx\MIN ROBEET HAYDON 151 

I wondered I had seen no deer, when looking into the 
shades I saw a lineal descendant, may be, of the very 
buck Shakespeare shot, and was tried for shooting", loung- 
ing on his speckled haunches, and staring at me; and 
then up jumped a beautiful doe, which I had not seen, 
and sprang off as if her feet were feathers. The house 
was now full in sight, and crossing a narrow, old, fan- 
tastic and broken bridge, I came by the back-way to the 
entrance of the garden. Here sat a lady with a parroquet, 
and a gardener cutting the grass; so fearing I had in- 
truded, I turned back again to the private entrance, and 
sent in my compliments that I was from London, and 
begged permission to see the house. Leave was granted 
directly. The housekeeper, a pleasant woman, said, ''Here 
is the hall where Sir Thomas tried Shakespeare." This 
is evidently^ the way the family pride alludes to the fact, 
and I dare 'say servants and all think Shakespeare a dis- 
solute fellow who "ought to have been transported." I 
am convinced the hall is nearly the same as when Shake- 
spear.e was tried in it. 

I like Malone's exquisite moral feeling! He proves 
there was no park ; but might not deer be enclosed ? Deer- 
stealing was thought no more of in those days than apple- 
stealing in these; and if he did not steal deer, why should 
Shakespeare give the Lucy family under Shallow? And 
in the "Winter's Tale" say, "I would there were no age 
between ten and three and twenty, or that youth should 
sleep out the rest, for "there is nothing in the between 
but . . . wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting!" 
His works allude to the point sufficiently to make me sus- 
pect, and tradition renders it most probable. Admirers 
of a genius must have him a true beau ideal, like the 
Apollo; and like the Apollo, w^ithout a single natural de- 
tail to excite our sympathies. 

x\s I returned home, I could not help feeling how short 
a road is when in pursuit of an object, and how long and 
tedious when the object is gained. It began to rain with 
vigour, so disdaining the beaten path I dashed over a 
hedge on a voyage of discovery. At one time I came 
close to the river stretching along like a mirror, reflect- 
ing earth and sky, and at another plumped upon a nest 
of cottages embosomed in trees, with rosy, scrambling, 



152 BENJAMIN EOBEET HAYDON [.Et. 42 

dirty children, squatting on broken steps. I pushed on 
through flood and mud, and long wet grass and beaten- 
down barley, and at last got close to Stratford Bridge. 
At a humble cottage was the sign of "The Plough and 
Harrow," and "capital ale" posted up. So, wet and 
muddy, I walked in, and found a pure specimen of a 
country alehouse. It was quite a house of Shakespeare's 
time, everything neat and characteristic. Smoking on a 
back bench was a country-looking farmer's man. I dried 
myself at the fire, and ordered some ale, and a pint for 
my smoking companion. "Well," said I, "did you ever 
hear of Shakespeare ?" "Heer of un, ah !" (puff ! came out 
a volley of smoke) " 'ee warn't borrn in Henley Street 
tho' a' !" "Where then ?" said I. "By the waathur," said 
he. "Who told you that ?" I asked. "Why, Jahn Cooper." 
"Jahn Cooper," shrieked the landlady, "why, what dus 'ee 
knaw aboot it?" "Nonsense," said the barmaid sharply. 
My pot companion gave a furious smoke at thus being 
floored at the beginning of his attempt to put forth a 
new theory for my benefit, looked at me very gravely, and 
prepared to overwhelm me at once. He puffed away, and 
after taking a sip he said, "Ah zur! there's another won- 
derful feller!" "Who?" said I. "Why," said he, "Jahn 
Cooper, I tell 'ee." Kestraining myself with a strong 
effort, I said, "And what has he done?" "Dun," said he,' 
sitting back and smacking his knee, "dun!" in a voice 
of thunder, "why, zur, I'll tell 'ee;" and laying down his 
pipe, and looking right into my efes under his old weather- 
beaten, embrowned hat, he leaned forward, "I'll tell 'ee; 
'ee's lived 'ere in this yeer town for ninety yeer as man 
and boy, and 'ee's never had the toothache, and neever last 
wan!" I saw the exquisite beauty of this in an instant. 
He then took up his pipe, letting the smoke ooze from 
the sides of his mouth, instead of puffing it out horizon- 
tally, till it ascended in curls of conscious victory to the 
ceiling of the apartment, while he leaned back his head 
and crossed his legs with an air of superior intelligence 
as if this conversation must now conclude. We were no 
longer on a level. 



^t. 54] BENJAMIN KOBERT HAYDON 153 

[-Et. 54] 

To His Wife 

[THE TIPSY undergraduate] 

Oxford, 2nd March, 1840. 

Last evening I dined en famille^H^ the warden 

of N;w CotgTf d%pent a very e>.^^^^ f^| 

eldest daughter has a ge;?^"? ^"^ifjj^^^de me die with 
showed me two i'^ .P"*'^!^'^ , derSaduate, who, very 
laughing; one was that of an J^^^ergr ,^.^^^^^ 

tipsy one night, walked ™to the wara ^^^^ ^^ 

stead of his own rooms, ^^"^.''"Xre locked him in, and 
bis mistake. The ^'^"'^^t^^^^^^'^^rand tried to persuade 
called the warden, who ^ent down ana ^^ 

the young |entleman to go « -^-^^J^yoAng scamp, 
purpose. The attitude ot tm» a ^^^ ^^^^^ 

standing on his heels ^7,^^=' "°^er his nose and his 
dresser, with his cap and t'>';^^'/'y^^^"g„ the warden's 
eyes, doggedly looking into ^»=« f ^f '^, ^p, ^,s per- 
legs, while the warden stood in "o"^ " „ ^j ^^ars came 
fe^tiy irresistible. I l-|^ed over Jt -"t^l f^^^^j ^,,1 

l":roTcrse ly^erTv^tr genius, hecause she 

will not have to work ^f^ 'Xl'^^^ last few days than 
I have learned more of Ox rd^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^_ 

i::: theMlot^Ul'warden, and the warden com- 

plains of both. ... 



[^t. 26] LOKD BYKON 

1788-1824 

To Thomas Moore 

[engagement to miss milbanke] 

Newstead Abbey, Sept. 20, 1814. 

Here's to her who long 

Hath waked the poet's sigh ! 

The girl who gave to song . 
What gold could never buy. 

My dear Moore, — 

I am going to be married — that is, I am accepted, and 
one usually hopes the rest will follow. My mother of 
the Gracchi (that are to be), you think too strait-laced 
for me, although the paragon of only children, and in- 
vested with "golden opinions of all sorts of men," and 
full of "most blest conditions" as Desdemona herself. 
Miss Milbanke is the lady, and I have her father's invi- 
tation to proceed there in my elect capacity, — which, how- 
ever, I cannot do till I have settled some business in Lon- 
don, and got a blue coat. 

She is said to be an heiress, but of that I really know 
nothing certainly, and shall not enquire. But I do know 
that she has talents and excellent qualities; and you will 
not deny her judgment, after having refused six suitors 
and taken me. 

Now, if you have anything to say against this, pray 
do ; my mind's made up, positively fixed, determined, and 
therefore I will listen to reason, because now it can do 
no harm. Things may occur to break it off, but I will 
hope not. In the mean time, I tell you (a secret, by the 
by, — at least, till I know she wishes it to be public) that 
I have proposed and am accepted. You need not be in 
a hurry to wish me joy, for one mayn't be married for 
months. I am going to town to-morrow: but expect to 
be here, on my way there, within a fortnight. 

If this had not happened, I should have gone to Italy. 
In my way down, perhaps, you will meet me at Notting- 
ham,^ and come over with me here. I need not say that 
nothing will give me greater pleasure. I must, of course, 

154 



.Et 31] LOED BYRON 155 

reform thoroughly; and, seriously, if I can contribute to 
her happiness, I shall secure my own. She is so good a 
person, that — that — in short, I wish I was a better. 

Ever, etc. 

[^t. 31] 

To John Murray 
["out of sorts, out of nerves"] 

Bologna, August 24, 1819. 
Dear Sir, — 

I wrote to you by last post, enclosing a buffooning let- 
ter for publication, addressed to the buffoon Roberts, who 
has thought proper to tie a canister to his own tail. It 
was written off hand, and in the midst of circumstances 
not very favourable to facetiousness, so that there may, 
perhaps, be more bitterness than enough for that sort of 
small acid punch. You will tell me. 

Keep the anonymous, in every case: it helps what fun 
there may be; but if the matter grows serious about Don 
Juan, and you feel yourself in a scrape, or me either, own 
that I am the author. I will never shrink; and if you 
do, I can always answer you in the question of Guati- 
mozin to his minister — each being on his own coals. 

I wish that I had been in better spirits, but I am out 
of sorts, out of nerves; and now and then (I begin to 
fear) out of my senses. All this Italy has done for me, 
and not England : I defy all of you, and your climate to 
boot, to make me mad. But if ever I do really become a 
Bedlamite, and wear a strait waistcoat, let me be brought 
back among you ; your people will then be proper com- 
pany. 

I assure you what I here say and feel has nothing to 
do with England, either in a literary or personal point 
of view. All my present pleasures or plagues are as 
Italian as the Opera. And after all, they are but trifles, 
for all this arises from my dama's being in the country 
for three days (at Capofiume) ; but as I could never live 
for but one human being at a time, (and, I assure you, 
that one has never been myself, as you may know by the 
consequences, for the Selfish are successful in life,) I feel 
alone and unhappy. 



15G • LOKD BYRON [^t. 32 

I have sent for my daughter from Venice, and I ride 
daily, and walk in a Garden, under a purple canopy of 
grapes, and sit by a fountain, and talk with the Gardener 
of his toils, which seem greater than Adam's, and with 
his wife, and with his Son's wife, who is the youngest 
of the party, and, I think, talks best of the three. Then 
I revisit the Campo Santo, and my old friend, the Sex- 
ton, has two— but one the prettiest daughter imaginable; 
and I amuse myself with contrasting her beautiful and 
innocent face of fifteen with the skulls with which he 
has peopled several cells, and particularly with that of 
one skull dated 1766, which was once covered (the tra- 
dition goes,) by the most lovely features of Bologna — 
noble and rich. When I look at these, and at this girl — 
when I think of what tJiey ivere, and what she must be — 
why, then, my dear Murray, I won't shock you by saying 
what I think. It is little matter what becomes of us 
''bearded men," but I don't like the notion of a beautiful 
woman's lasting less than a beautiful tree — than her own 
picture — her own shadow, which won't change so to the 
Sun as her face to the mirror. I must leave off, for my 
head aches consumedly : I have never been quite well since 
the night of the representation of Alfieri's Mirra, a fort- 
night ago. 

Yours ever, 
B. 
[^t. 32] 

To John Murray 

[anecdotes of CHARLES SKINNER MATTHEWS] 

Ravenna, 9b re 19, 1820. 
Dear Murray, — 

What you said of the late Charles Skinner Matthews 
has set me to my recollections; but I have not been able 
to turn up anything which would do for the purposed 
Memoir of his brother, — even if he had previously done 
enough during his life to sanction the introduction of 
anecdotes so merely personal. He was, however, a very 
extraordinary man, and would have been a great one. No 
one ever succeeded in a more surpassing degree than he 
did as far as he went. He was indolent, too; but when- 
ever he stripped, he overthrew all antagonists. His con- 



.Et. 32] LORD BYRON 157 

quests will be found registered at Cambridge, particularly 
his Downing one, which w^as hotly and highly contested, 
and yet easily won. Hobhouse was his most intimate 
friend, and can tell you more of him than any man. 
William Bankes also a great deal. I myself recollect 
more of his oddities than of his academical qualities, for 
we lived most together at a very idle period of my life. 
When I went up to Trinity, in 1805, at the age of seven- 
teen and a half, I was miserable and untoward to a de- 
gree. I was wretched at leaving Harrow, to which I had 
become attached during the two last years of my stay 
there; wretched at going to Cambridge instead of Ox- 
ford (there were no rooms vacant at Christchurch) ; 
wretched from some private domestic circumstances of 
different kinds, and consequently about as unsocial as a 
wolf taken from the troop. So that, although I knew 
Matthews, and met him often then at Bankes's, (who was 
my collegiate pastor, and master, and patron,) and at 
Rhode's, Milnes's, Price's, Dick's, Macnamara's, Far- 
rell's, Gaily Knight's, and others of that set of contem- 
poraries, yet I was neither intimate with him, nor with 
any one else, except my old schoolfellow Edward Long 
(with whom I usee! to pass the day in riding and swim- 
ming), and William Bankes, who was good-naturedly tol- 
erant of my ferocities. 

It was not till 1807, after I had been upwards of a year 
away from Cambridge, to which I had returned again to 
reside for my degree, that I became one of Matthews's 
familiars, by means of Hobhouse, who, after hating me 
for two years, because I w^ore a white hat, and a grey coat, 
and rode a grey horse (as he says himself), took me into 
his good graces because I had written some poetry. I had 
always lived a good deal, and got drunk occasionally, in 
their company — but now we became really friends in a 
morning. Matthews, however, was not at this period 
resident in College. I met him chiefly in London, and 
at uncertain periods at Cambridge, Hobhouse, in the 
mean time, did great things: he founded the Cambridge 
"Whig Club" (which he seems to have forgotten), and 
the "Amicable Society," which was dissolved in conse- 
quence of the members constantly quarrelling, and made 
himself very popular with "us youth," and no less for- 



158 LOKD BYRON [.Et. 32 

midable to all tutors, professors, and heads of Colleges. 
William Bankes was gone; while he stayed, he ruled the 
roast — or rather the roasting — and was father of all mis- 
chiefs. 

Matthews and I, meeting in London and elsewhere, 
became great cronies. He was not good tempered — nor 
am I — but with a little tact his temper was manageable, 
and I thought him so superior a man, that I was willing 
to sacrifice something to his humours, which were often, 
at the same time, amusing and provoking. What became 
of his papers (and he certainly had many), at the time 
of his death, was never known. I mention this by the 
way, fearing to skip it over, and a:s he wrote remarkably 
well, both in Latin and English. We went down to New- 
stead together, where I had got a famous cellar, and 
Monhs' dresses from a masquerade warehouse. We were 
a company of seven or eight, with an occasional neigh- 
bour or so for visitors, and used to sit up late in our 
friars' dresses, drinking burgundy, claret, and champagne, 
and what not, out of the sltidl-cup, and all sorts of glasses, 
and buffooning all round the house, in our conventual 
garments. Matthews always denominated me "the Ab- 
bot," and never called me by any other name in his good 
humours, to the day of his death. The harmony of these 
our symposia was somewhat interrupted, a few days after 
our assembling, by Matthews's threatening to throw Hob- 
house out of a window, in consequence of I know not 
what commerce of jokes ending in this epigram. Hob- 
house came to me and said, that "his respect and regard 
for me as host would not permit him to call out any of 
my guests, and that he should go to town next morning." 
He did. It was in vain that I represented to him that 
the window was not high, and that the turf under it was 
particularly soft. Away he went. 

Matthews and myself had travelled down from London 
together, talking all the way incessantly upon one single 
topic. When we got to Loughborough, I know not what 
chasm had made us diverge for a moment to some other 
subject, at which he was indignant. "Come," said he, 
"don't let us break through — let us go on as we began, 
to our journey's end" ; and so he continued, and was as 
entertaining as ever to the very end. He had previously 



.^t. 32] LOED BYEON 159 

occupied, during- my year's absence from Cambridge, my 
rooms in Trinity, with the furniture; and Jones, the 
tutor, in his odd way, had said, on putting him in, "Mr. 
Matthews, I recommend to your attention not to damage 
any of the moveables, for Lord Byron, Sir, is a young 
man of tumultuous passions/' Matthews was delighted 
with this; and whenever anybody came to visit him, 
begged them to handle the very door with caution; and 
used to repeat Jones's admonition in his tone and man- 
ner. There was a large mirror in the room, on which he 
remarked, "that he thought his friends were grown un- 
commonly assiduous in coming to see him, but he soon 
discovered that they only came to see themselves/' Jones's 
phrase of ''tumultuous passions/' and the whole scene, 
had put him into such good humour, that I verily believe 
that I owed to it a portion of his good graces. 

When at Newstead, somebody by accident rubbed against 
one of his white silk stockings, one day before dinner; 
of course the gentleman apologised. "Sir," answered 
Matthews, "it may be all very well for you, who have a 
great many silk stockings, to dirty other people's; but 
to me, who have only this one pair-, which I have put on 
in honour of the Abbot here, no apology can compensate 
for such carelessness; besides, the expense of washing.'^ 
He had the same sort of droll sardonic way about every- 
thing. A wild Irishman, named Farrell, one evening be- 
gan to say something at a large supper at Cambridge; 
Matthews roared out "Silence!" and then, pointing to 
Farrell, cried out in the words of the oracle, "Orson is 
endowed luith reason/' You may easily suppose that Or- 
son lost what reason he had acquired, on hearing this 
compliment. When Hobhouse published his volume of 
poems, the Miscellany (which Matthews would call the 
"Miss-sell-any"), all that could be drawn from him was, 
that the preface was "extremely like AYalsh/' Hobhouse 
thought this at first a compliment; but we never could 
make out what it was, for all we know of Walsh is his 
Ode to King William, and Pope's epithet of "knowing 
Walsh/' When the Newstead party broke up for London, 
Hobhouse and Matthews, who were the greatest friends 
possible, agreed, for a whim, to walk together to town. 
They quarrelled by the way, and actually walked the 



160 LORD BYRON [.Et. 32 

latter half of the journey, occasionally passing and re- 
passing, without speaking. When Matthews had got to 
Highgate, he had spent all his money but three-pence 
halfpenny, and determined to spend that also in a pint of 
beer, which I believe he was drinking before a public- 
house, as Hobhouse passed him (still without speaking) 
for the last time on their route. They were reconciled 
in London again. 

One of Matthews's passions was "the fancy"; and he 
sparred uncommonly well. But he always got beaten in 
rows, or combats with the bare fist. In swimming, too, 
he swam well; but with ejfort and labour, and too high 
out of the water; so that Scrope Davies and myself, of 
whom he was therein somewhat emulous, always told him 
that he would be drowned if ever he came to a difficult 
pass in the water. He was so ; but surely Scrope and my- 
self would have been most heartily glad that 

"the Dean had lived, 
And our prediction proved a lie." 

His head was uncommonly handsome, very like what 
Pope's was in his youth. 

His voice, and laugh, and features, are strongly re- 
sembled by his brother Henry's, if Henry be he of King's 
College. His passion for boxing was so great, that he 
actually wanted me to match him with Dogherty (whom 
I had backed and made the match for against Tom 
Belcher), and I saw them spar together at my own lodg- 
ings with the gloves on. As he was bent upon it, I would 
have backed Dogherty to please him, but the match went 
oif. It was of course to have been a private fight, in a 
private room. 

On one occasion, being too late to go home and dress, 
he was equipped by a friend (Mr. Baillie, I believe,) in 
a magnificently fashionable and somewhat exaggerated 
shirt and neckcloth. He proceeded to the Opera, and 
took his station in Fop's Alley. During the interv^al be- 
tween the opera and the ballet, an acquaintance took his 
station by him and saluted him: "Come round," said 
Matthews, "come round." — "Why should I come round?" 
said the other; "you have only to turn your head — I am 



aEt. 32] LOED BYEON 161 

close by you." — 'That is exactly what I cannot do," said 
Matthews; "don't you see the state I am in?" pointing 
to his buckram shirt collar and inflexible cravat, — and 
there he stood with his head always in the same perpen- 
dicular position during the whole spectacle. 

One evening, after dining together, as we were going 
to the Opera, I happened to have a spare Opera ticket 
(as subscriber to a box), and presented it to Matthews. 
"Now, sir," said he to Hobhouse afterwards, "this I call 
courteous in the Abbot — another man would never have 
thought that I might do better with half a guinea than 
throw it "^o a door-keeper; — but here is a man not only 
asks me to dinner, but gives me a ticket for the theatre." 
These were only his oddities, for no man was more liberal, 
or more honourable in all his doings and dealings, than 
Matthews. He gave Hobhouse and me, before we set out 
for Constantinople, a most splendid entertainment, to 
which we did ample justice. One of his fancies was 
dining at all sorts of out-of-the-way places. Somebody 
popped upon him in I know not what coffee-house in the 
Strand — and what do you think was the attraction ? Why, 
that he paid a shilling (I think) to dine ivith his hat on. 
This he called his "hat house," and used to boast of the 
comfort of being covered at meal times. 

When Sir Henry Smith was expelled from Cambridge 
for a row with a tradesman named "Hiron," Matthews 
solaced himself with shouting under Hiron's windows 
every evening, 

"Ah nie! what perils do environ 
The man who meddles with hot Hiron.'' 

He was also of that band of profane scoffers who, under 
the auspices of ... , used to rouse Lort Mansel (late 
Bishop of Bristol) from his slumbers in the lodge of 
Trinity; and when he appeared at the window foaming 
with wrath, and crying out, "I know you, gentlemen, I 
know you !" were wont to reply, "We beseech thee to hear 
us, good Lort! — Good Lort, deliver us!" (Lort was his 
Christian name). As he was very free in his speculations 
upon all kinds of subjects, although by no means either 
dissolute or intemperate in his conduct, and as I was no 



162 LORD BYRON [.i^:t. 32 

less ind^endent, our conversation and correspondence 
used to alarm our friend Hobhouse to a considerable 
degree. 

You must be almost tired of my packets, which will 
have cost a mint of postage. 

Salute Gifford and all my friends. 

Yours, 
B. 
[^t. 32] 

To Thomas Moore 
[an assassination] 

Ravenna, Dec. 9, 1820. 

I open my letter to tell you a fact, which will show 
the state of this country better than I can. The com- 
mandant of the troops is noiu lying dead in my house. 
He was shot at a little past eight o'clock, about two hun- 
dred paces from my door. I was putting on my great- 
coat to visit Madame la Contessa G. when I heard the 
shot. On coming into the hall, I found all my servants 
on the balcony, exclaiming that a man was murdered. I 
immediately ran down, calling on Tita (the bravest of 
them) to follow me. The rest wanted to hinder us from 
going, as it is the custom for every body here, it seems, 
to run away from "the stricken deer." 

However, down we ran, and found him lying on his 
back, almost, if not quite, dead, with five wounds; one 
in the heart, two in the stomach, one in the finger, and 
the other in the arm. Some soldiers cocked their guns, 
and wanted to hinder me from passing. However, we 
passed, and I found Diego, the adjutant, crying over him 
like a child — a surgeon, who said nothing of his profes- 
sion — a priest, sobbing a frightened prayer — and the com- 
mandant, all this time, on his back, on the hard, cold 
pavement, without light or assistance, or anything around 
him but confusion and dismay. 

As nobody could, or would, do anything but howl and 
pray and as no one would stir a finger to move him, 
for fear of consequences, I lost my patience — made my 
servant and a couple of the mob take up the body — sent 
oif two soldiers to the guard — despatched Diego to the 
Cardinal with the news, and had the commandant carried 



^t. 34] LOKD BYKON 163 

upstairs into my own quarter. But it was too late, he 
was gone — not at all disfigured — bled inwardly — not above 
an ounce or two came out. 

I had him partly stripped — made the surgeon examine 
him, and examined him myself. He had been shot by 
cut balls or slugs. I felt one of the slugs, which had 
gone through him, all but the skin. Everybody conjec- 
tures why he was killed, but no one knows how. The 
gun was found close by him — an old gun, half filed down. 

He only said, Dio! and Gesu! two or three times, 
and appeared to have suifered very little. Poor fellow! 
he was a brave officer, but had made himself much dis- 
liked by the people. I knew him personally, and had met 
with him often at conversazioni and elsewhere. My house 
is full of soldiers, dragoons, doctors, priests, and all kinds 
of persons, — though I have now cleared it, and clapt 
sentinels at the doors. To-morrow the body is to be 
moved. The town is in the greatest confusion, as you 
may suppose. 

You are to know that, if I had not had the body moved, 
they would have left him there till morning in the street, 
for fear of consequences. I would not choose to let even' 
a dog die in such a manner, without succour: — and, as 
for consequences, I care for none in a duty. 

Yours, etc. 

P.S. — The lieutenant on duty by the liody is smoking 
his pipe with great composure. — A queer people this. 

[iEt. 34] 

To Thomas Moore 
[burning Shelley's body; "don juan"] 

Pisa, August 27, 1822. 
It is boring to trouble you with "such small gear;" but 
it must be owned that I should be glad if you would 
enquire w^hether my Irish subscription ever reached the 
committee in Paris from Leghorn, My reasons, like Vel- 
lum's, "are threefold :" — First, I doubt the accuracy of 
all almoners, or remitters of benevolent cash; second, I 
do suspect that the said Committee, having in part served 
its time to time-serving may have kept back the acknowl- 



164 LORD BYRON [^t. 34 

edgment of an obnoxious politician's name in their lists; 
and third, I feel pretty sure that I shall one" day be 
twitted by the government scribes for having been a 
professor of love for Ireland, and not coming forward 
with the others in her distresses. 

It is not as you may opine, that I am ambitious of 
having my name in the papers, as I can have that any 
day in the week gratis. All I want is to know if the 
Reverend Thomas Hall did or did not remit my subscrip- 
tion (200 scudi of Tuscany, or about a thousand francs, 
more or less,) to the Committee at Paris. 

The other day at Viareggio, I thought proper to swim 
off to my schooner (the Bolivar) in the offing, and thence 
to shore again — about three miles, or better, in all. As 
it was at mid-day, under a broiling sun, the consequence 
has beeen a feverish attack, and my whole skin's coming 
off, after going through the process of one large continu- 
ous blister, raised by the sun and sea together. I have 
suffered much pain ; not being able to lie on my back, 
or even side; for my shoulders and arms were equally 
St. Bartholomewed. But it is over, — and I have got a 
new skin, and am as glossy as a snake in its new suit. 

We have been burning, the bodies of Shelley and Will- 
iams on the seashore, to render them fit for removal and 
regular interment. You can have no idea what an ex- 
traordinary -effect such a funeral pile has, on a desolate 
shore, with mountains in the back-ground and the sea be- 
fore, and the singular appearance the salt and frankin- 
cense gave to the flame. All of Shelley was consumed, 
except his heart, which would not take the flame, and is 
now preserved in spirits of wine. 

Your old acquaintance Londonderry has quietly died 
at North Cray! and the virtuous De Witt was torn in 

pieces by the populace ! What a lucky the Irishman 

has been in his life and end. In him your Irish Franklin 
est mort! 

Leigh Hunt is sweating articles for his new Journal; 
and both he and I think it somewhat shabby in you not 
to contribute. Will you become one of the properriotersf 
"Do, and we go snacks." I recommend you to think 
twice before you respond in the negative. 

I have nearly {quite three) four new cantos of Don 



.Et. 47] RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM 165 

Juan ready. I obtained permission from the female Cen- 
sor Morum of my morals to continue it, provided it were 
immaculate; so I have been as decent as need be. There 
is a deal of war — a siege, and all that, in the style, 
graphical and technical, of the shipwreck in Canto Sec- 
ond, which "took," as they say in the Row. 

Yours, etc. 

F.8. — That . . . Galignani has about ten lies in one 
paragraph. It was not a Bible that was found in Shelley's 
pocket, but John Keats's poems. However^ it would not 
have been strange, for he was a great admirer of Scripture 
as a composition. I did not send my bust to the academy 
of New York; but I sat for my picture to young West, 
an American artist, at the request of some members of 
that Academy to liim that he would take my portrait, — 
for the Academy, I believe. 

I had, and still have, thoughts of South America, but 
am fluctuating between it and Greece. I should have gone, 
long ago, to one of them, but for my liaison with the 
Countess G. ; for love, in these days, is little compatible 
with glory. She would be delighted to go too; but T do 
not choose to expose her to a long voyage, and a residence 
in an unsettled country, where I shall probably take a 
part of some sort. 



[.Et.47] RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM 
1788-1845 
To Master Edward Barham (^Etat. 8) 
[a gift of books] 

August 17, 1836. 
My dear little Ned, 
As I fear you have read 
All the books that you have, from great A down to Z, 
And your Aunt, too, has said 
That you're very well bred, 
And don't scream and yell fit to waken the dead, 
I think that instead 
Of that vile gingerbread 



166 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY [.Et. 19 

With which little boys, I know, like to be fed 

(Though, lying like lead 

On the stomach, the head 
Gets affected, of which most mammas have a dread), 

I shall rather be led 

Before you to spread 
These two little volumes, one blue and one red. 

As three shillings have fled 

From my pocket, dear Ned, 
Don't dog's-ear nor dirt them, nor read them in bed ! 
Your affectionate father. 

R. H. B. 

[^Et. 19] PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
1792-1822 
To Elizabeth Kitchener 
[thomas jefferson hogcx] 
Keswick, Chestnut Hill, Cumberland, 
[Thursday, 14 November, 1811]. 

My dearest Friend, — 

Probably my letters have not left Keswick sufficiently 
long for your answer; I have more to tell you, however, 
which relates to this terrible affair. 

The day we left him, he wrote several letters to me, — 
the first evidently in the frenzy of his disappointment 
(for I had not told him the time of our departure). "I 
will have Harriet's forgiveness, or blow my brains out at 
her feet." The others, being written in moments of tran- 
quillity, appeased immediate alarm on that score. You 
are already surprised, shocked : I can conceive it. Oh, it 
is terrible! this stroke has almost withered my being! 
Were it not for that dear friend whose happiness I so 
much prize, which at some future period I may perhaps 
constitute, — did I not live for an end, and aim, sanctified, 
hallowed, — I might have slept in peace. Yet no — not 
quite that : I might have been a colonist of Bedlam. 

Stay: I promised to relate the circumstances. I will 
proceed historically. 

I had observed that Harriet's behaviour to my friend 
had^ been greatly altered :»I saw she regarded him with 
prejudice and hatred. I saw it with great pain, and re- 



JEt. 19] PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 167 

marked it to her. Her dark hints of liis unworthiness 
alarmed me, yet alarmed me vaguely; for, believe mie, 
this alarm was untainted with the slightest suspicion of 
his disloyalty to virtue and friendship. Conceive my 
horror when, on pressing the conversation, the secret of 
his unfaithfulness was divulged! I sought him, and we 
walked to the fields beyond York. I desired to know 
fully the account of this affair. I heard it froin him, 
and I believe he was sincere. All I can recollect of that 
terrible day was that I pardoned him — freely, fully par- 
doned him; that I would still be a friend to him, and 
hoped soon to convince him how lovely virtue was ; that 
his crime, not himself, was the object of my detestation; 
that I value a human being not for what it has been, 
but for what it is; that I hoped the time would come 
when he would regard this horrible error with as much 
disgust as I did. He said little: he was pale, terror- 
struck, remorseful. 

This character is not his own: it sits ill upon him, — it 
will not long be his. His account was this. He came 
to Edinburgh. He saw me; he saw Harriet. He loved 
her (I use the word because he used it. You compre- 
hend the different ideas it excites under different modes 
of application). He loved her. This passion, so far from 
meeting with resistance, was encouraged, — purposely en- 
couraged, from motives which then appeared to him not 
wrong. On our arrival at York, he avowed it. Harriet 
forbade other mention; yet forbore to tell me, hoping she 
might hear no more of it. On my departure from York 
to Sussex (when you saw me), he urged the same suit, — • 
urged it with arguments of detestable sophistry. "There 
is no injury to him who knows it not: — why is it wrong 
to permit my love, if it does not alienate affection?" 
These failed of success. At last, Harriet talked to him 
much of its immorality: and (though I fear her argu- 
ments were such as could not be logically superior to his) 
he confessed to her his conviction of having acted wrong, 
and, as some expiation, proposed instantly to inform me 
by letter of the whole. This Harriet refused to permit, 
fearing its effect upon my mind at such a distance: she 
could not know luhen I should return home. I returned 
the very next day. 



168 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY [^t. 26 

This, as near as I recollect, was the substance of what 
cool consideration can extract from his account. The 
circumstances are true: Harrietts account coincides. 

I have since written to him — frequently, and at great 
length. His letters are exculpatory : you shall see them. — 
Adieu at present to the subject. 

No, my dearest friend, I will never cease to write to 
you. I never can cease to think of you. 

Happiness, fleeting creation of circumstances, where 
art thou? I read your letter with delight; but this de- 
light is even mixed with melancholy. And you ! Tell 
me that you too are unhappy, — the cup of my misfortunes 
is then completed to the dregs. Yet did you not say that 
we should stimulate each other to virtue? Shall I be 
the first to fail? No! This listless torpor of regret 
will never do — it never shall possess me. Behold me then 
reassuming myself, deserving your esteem, — you, my sec- 
ond self! 

Harriet has laughed at your suppositions. She invites 
you to our habitation wherever we are : she does this 
sincerely, and bids me send her love to you. 

Eliza, her sister, is with us. She is, I think, a woman 
rather superior to the generality. She is prejudiced; 
but her prejudices I do not consider unvanquishable. 
Indeed, I have already conquered some of them. 

The scenery here is awfully beautiful. Our window 
commands a view of two lakes, and the giant mountains 
which confine them. But the object most interesting to 
my feelings is Southey's habitation. He is now on a 
journey: when he returns, I shall call on him. 

Adieu, dearest friend. 

Ever yours, with true devotement and love, 

Percy Shelley. 
[^t. 26] 

To Thomas Love Peacock 
[lord byrox; rome] 

Naples, December 22, 1818. 
My dear Peacock, — 

T have received a letter from you here, dated November 
1st; you see the reciprocation of letters from the term 
of our travels is more slow. I entirelv agree with what 



^t. 26] PEKCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 169 

you say about Childe Harold. The spirit in which it is 
written is, if insane, the most wicked and mischievous 
insanity that ever was given forth. It is a kind of 
obstinate and self-willed folly, in which he hardens him- 
self. I remonstrated with him in vain on the tone of 
mind from which such a view of things alone arises. 
For its real root is very different from its apparent one. 
Nothing can be less sublime than the true source of 
these expressions of contempt and desperation. The fact 
is, that first, the Italian women with whom he associates 
are perhaps the most contemptible of all who exist under 
the moon — the most ignorant, the most disgusting, the 
most bigoted; countesses smell so strongly of garlic, that 
an ordinary Englishman cannot approach them. Well, 
L. B. is familiar with the lowest sort of these women, 
the people his gondolieri pick up in the streets. He 
associates with wretches who seem almost to have lost 
the gait and physiognomy of man, and who do not scruple 
to avow practices, which are not only not named, but I 
believe seldom even conceived in England. He says he 
disapproves, but he endures. He is heartily and deeply 
discontented with himself; and contemplating in the dis- 
torted mirror of his own thoughts the nature and the 
destiny of man, what can he behold but objects of con- 
tempt and despair? But that he is a great poet, I think 
the address to Ocean proves. And he has a certain 
degree of candour while you talk to him, but unfortu- 
nately it does not outlast your departure. No, I do not 
doubt, and for his sake, I ought to hope, that his present 
career must end soon in some violent circumstance. 

Since I last wrote to you, I have seen the ruins of 
Rome, the Vatican, St. Peter's, and all the miracles of 
ancient and modern art contained in that majestic city. 
The impression of it exceeds anything I have ever ex- 
perienced in my travels. We stayed there only a week, 
intending to return at the end of February, and devote 
two or three months to Its mines of inexhaustible con- 
templation, to which period I refer you for a minute 
account of it. We visited the Forum and the ruins of the 
Coliseum every day. The Coliseum is unlike any work 
of human hands I ever saw before. It is of enormous 
height and circuit, and the arches built of massy stones 



170 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY [.Et. 26 

are piled on one another, and jut into the blue air, shat- 
tered into the forms of overhanging rocks. It has been 
changed by time into the image of an amphitheatre of 
rocky hills*^ overgrown by the wild olive, the myrtle, and 
the fig-tree, and threaded by little paths, which wind 
among its ruined stairs and immeasurable galleries; the 
copse-wood overshadows you as you wander through its 
labyrinths, and the wild weeds of this climate of flowers 
bloom under your feet. The arena is covered with grass, 
and pierces, like the skirts of a natural plain, the chasms 
of the broken arches around. . But a small part of the 
exterior circumference remains — it is exquisitely light and 
beautiful; and the eifect of the perfection of its archi- 
tecture, adorned with ranges of Corinthian pilasters, sup- 
porting a bold cornice, i£ such, as to diminish the eftect 
of its greatness. The interior is all ruin. I can scarcely 
believe that when encrusted with Dorian marble and or- 
namented by columns of Eg\i3tian granite, its effect 
could have been so sublime and so impressive as in its 
present state. It is open to the sky, and it was the 
clear and sunny weather of the end of November in 
this climate when we visited it, day after day. . . . 

I have told you little about Rome; but I reserve the 
Pantheon, and St. Peter's, and the Vatican, and Raphael, 
for my return. About a fortnight ago I left Rome, and 
Mary and Claire followed in three days, for it was neces- 
sary to procure lodgings here without alighting at an inn. 
From my peculiar mode of travelling I saw little of 
the country, but could just observe that the wild beauty 
of the scenery and the barbarous ferocity of the inhabi- 
tants progressively increased. On entering Naples, the 
first circumstance that engaged my attention was an as- 
sassination. A youth ran out of a shop, pursued by a 
woman with a bludgeon, and a man armed with a knife. 
The man overtook him, and with one blow in the neck 
laid him dead in the road. On my expressing the emo- 
tions of horror and indignation which I felt, a Calabrian 
priest, who travelled with me, laughed heartily, and at- 
tempted to quiz me, as what the English call a fiat. I 
never felt such an inclination to beat any one. Heaven 
knows I have little power, but he saw that I looked ex- 
tremely d>i 'leased, and was silent. This same man, a 



^t. 27] PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 171 

fellow of gigantic strength and stature, had expressed 
the most frantic terror of robbers on the road: he cried 
at the sight of my pistol, and it had been with great 
difficulty that the joint exertions of myself and the 
vetturino* had quieted his hysterics. . . . 

Since I wrote this I have seen the museum of this 
city. Such statues! There is a Venus; an ideal shape 
of the most winning loveliness. A Bacchus, more sub- 
lime than any living being. A Satyr, making love to a 
youth, in which the expressed life of the sculpture, and 
the inconceivable beauty of the form of the youth, over- 
come one's repugnance to the subject. There are multi- 
tudes of wonderfully fine statues found in Herculaneum 
and Pompeii. We are going to see Pompeii the first day 
that the sea is waveless. Herculaneum is almost filled 
up; no more excavations are made; the king bought the 
ground and built a palace upon it. 

You don't see much of Hunt. I wish you could con- 
trive to see him when you go to town, and ask him what 
he means to answer to Lord Byron's invitation. He has 
now an opportunity, if he likes, of seeing Italy. What 
do you think of joining his party, and paying us a 
visit next year; I mean as soon as the reign of winter is 
dissolved? Write to me your thoughts upon this. I can- 
not express to you the pleasure it would give me to 
welcome such a party. 

I have depression enough of spirits and not good health, 
though I believe the warm air of Naples does me good. 
We see absolutely no one here. 

Adieu, my dear Peacock, 

affectionately your friend, 

P. B. S. 
[^t. 27] 

To Thomas Medwin 

["PROMETHEUS UXBOUXD; THE CEXCl"] 

Pisa, July 20, 1820. 
My dear Medwin, — 

I wrote to you a day or two ago at Geneva. I have 
since received your letter from the mountains. How 
much I envy you, or rather how much I sympathize in 

* Driver. 



172 PEKCY BYSSHE SHELLEY [.Et. 27 

the delights of your wandering. I have a passion for 
such expeditions, although partly the capriciousness of 
my health, and partly the want of the incitement of a 
companion, keep me at home. I see the mountains, the 
sky, and the trees from my windows, and recollect, as an 
old man does the mistress of his youth, the raptures of 
a more familiar intercourse, but without his regrets, for 
their forms are yet living in my mind. I hope you will 
not pass Tuscany, leaving your promised visit unpaid. 
I leave it to you to make the project of taking up your 
abode with such an animal of the other world as I am, 
agreeable to your friend; but Mrs. Shelley unites with me 
in assuring both yourself and him that, whatever else 
may be found deficient, a sincere welcome is at least 
in waiting for you. 

I am delighted with your approbation of my Cenci, 
and am encouraged to wish to present you with Prome- 
theus Unhoimd, a drama also, but a composition of a 
totally different character. I do not know if it be wise 
to affect variety in composition, or whether the attempt 
to excel in many ways does not debar from excellence in 
one particular kind. Prometheus Unhound is in the mer- 
est spirit of ideal poetry, and not, as the name would 
indicate, a mere imitation of the Greek drama; or, in- 
deed, if I have been successful, is it an imitation of 
anything. But you will judge. I hear it is just printed. 
and I probably shall receive copies from England before 
I see you. Your objection to the Cenci — as to the intro- 
duction of the name of God — is good, inasmuch as the 
play is addressed to a Protestant people ; but we Catholics 
speak eternally and familiarly of the Eirst Person of the 
Trinity, and, amongst us, religion is more interwoven 
with, and is less extraneous to, the system of ordinary 
life.. As to Cenci's Curse, I know not whether I can 
defend it or no. I wish I may be able; and, as it often 
happens respecting the worst part of an author's work, 
it is a particular favourite with me. I prided myself — 
as since your approbation I hope that I had just cause 
to do — upon the two concluding lines of the play. I 
confess I cannot approve of the squeamishness which 
excludes the exhibition of such suhjects from the scene 
— a squeamishness the produce, as I firmly believe, of a 



x^t. 29] PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 173 

lower tone of the public mind, and foreign to the majes- 
tic and confident wisdom of the g-olden age of our 
country. What think you of my boldness? I mean to 
write a play, in the spirit of human nature, without 
prejudice or passion, entitled Charles the First. So van- 
ity intoxicates people; but let those few who praise my 
verses, and in whose approbation I take so much delight, 
answer for the sin. 

I wonder what in the world the Queen has done. I 
should not wonder, after the whispers I have heard, to 
find that the green bag contained evidence that she had 
imitated Pasiphse, and that the Committee should rec- 
ommend to Parliament a Bill to exclude all Minotaurs 
from the succession. What silly stuff is this to employ a 
great nation about. I wish the King and the Queen, 
like Punch and his wife, would fight out their disputes 
in person. 

What is very strange, I can in no manner discover 
your parcels; I never knew anything more unfortunate. 
Klieber sends me your letters regularly (which, by the 
bye, I wish in future you w^ould direct to Pisa, as I have 
no money business now in Florence), but he has heard 
of no parcel or book. 

This warm weather agrees excellently with me. I only 
wish it would last all the year. Many things both to 
say and to hear be referred until we meet. 

Your affectionate friend, 

P. B. S. 
[^t. 29] 

To Leigh Huxt 
[a proposal coxcerxixg a periodical] 

Pisa, August 26th, 1821. 
My dearest Friend, — 

Since I last wrote to you, I have been on a visit to 
Lord Byron at Ravenna. The result of this visit was a 
determination on his part to come and live at Pisa; and 
I have taken the finest palace on the Lung' Arno for him. 
But the material part of my visit consists in a message 
which he desires me to give you, and which I think ought 
to add to your determination — for such a one I hope you 
have formed — of restoring your shattered health and spirits 



174 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY [.Et. 29 

by a migration to these "regions mild of calm and 
serene air." 

He proposes that you should come and go shares with 
him and me, in a periodical work, to be conducted here; 
in which each of the contracting parties should publish 
all their original compositions, and share the profits. He 
proposed it to Moore, but for some reason it was never 
brought to bear. There can be no doubt that the profits 
of any scheme in which you and Lord Byron engage, 
must, from various, yet co-operating reasons, be very 
great. As for myself, I am, for the present, only a sort 
of link between you and him, until you can know each 
other and effectuate the arrangement; since (to intrust 
you with a secret which, for your sake, I withhold from 
Lord Byron) nothing would induce me to share in the 
profits, and still less in the borrowed splendour of such 
a partnership. You and he, in different manners, would 
be equal, and would bring, in a different manner, but in 
the same proportion, equal stocks of reputation and suc- 
cess. Do not let my frankness with you, nor my belief 
that you deserve it more than Lord Byron, have the 
effect of deterring you from assuming a station in modern 
literature, which the universal voice of my contemporaries 
forbids me either to stoop or to aspire to. I. am, and I 
desire to be, nothing. 

I did not ask Lord Byron to assist me in sending a 
remittance for your journey; because there are men, 
however excellent, from whom we would never receive 
an obligation, in the worldly sense of the word; and I 
am as jealous for my friend as for myself. I, as you 
know, have it not: but I suppose that at last I shall 
make up an impudent face, and ask Horace Smith to 
add to the many obligations he has conferred on me. 
I know I need only ask. 

I think I have never told you how very much I like 
your Amyntas; it almost reconciles me to Translations. 
In another sense, I still demur. You might have written 
another such poem as the "Nymphs," with no great ac- 
cess of effort. I am full of thoughts and plans, and 
should do something if the feeble and irritable frame 
which incloses it was willing to obey the spirit. I 
fancy that then I should do great things. Before this 



^t. 29] PEECY BYSSHE SHELLEY 175 

you will have seen "Adonais." Lord Byron, I suppose 
from modesty on account of his being mentioned in it, 
did not say a word of "Adonais," though he was loud in 
his praise of "Prometheus": and, what you will not 
agree with him in, censure of the "Cenci." Certainly, 
if "Marino Faliero"* is a drama, the "Cenci" is not: 
but that between ourselves. Lord Byron is reformed, as 
far as gallantry goes, and lives with a beautiful and 
sentimental Italian lady, who is as much attached to 
him as may be. I trust greatly to his intercourse with 
you, for his creed to become as pure as he thinks his 
conduct is. He has many generous and exalted qualities, 
but the canker of aristocracy wants to be cut out. . . . 



[.Et. 29] 

To Thomas Love Peacock 
["gain; adoxais; hellas"] 
Pisa, January [probably 11th], 1822. 
My dear Peacock, — 

... I am still at Pisa, where I have at length fitted 
up some rooms at the top of a lofty palace that overlooks 
the city and the surrounding region, and have collected 
books and plants about me, and established myself for 
some indefinite time, which, if I read the future, will not 
be short. I wish you to send my books by the very first 
opportunity, and I expect in them a great augmentation 
of comfort. Lord Byron is established here, and we are 
constant companions. No small relief this, after the 
dreary solitude of the understanding and the imagination 
in which we past the first years of our expatriation, 
yoked to all sorts of miseries and discomforts. 

Of course you have seen his last volume, and if you 
before thought him a great poet, what is your opinion 
now that you have read Cain! The Foscari and Sar- 
danapalus I have not seen; but as they are in the style 
of his later fivritings, I doubt not they are very fine. 
We expect Hunt here every day, and remain in great 
anxiety on account of the heavy gales which he must 

* Byron's Marino Faliero was published in 1821; The Cenci had ap- 
peared in 1819. 



1T('. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY [.Et. 29 

have encountered at Christmas. Lord Byron has fitted 
up the lower apartments of his palace for liim, and Hunt 
will be agreeably surprised to find a commodious lodging 
prepared for him after the fatigues and dangers of his 
passage. I have been long idle, and, as far as writing 
goes, despondent; but I am now engaged on Charles the 
First/^ and a devil of a nut it is to crack. 

Mary and Clara (who is not with us just at present) 
are well, and so is our little boy, the image of poor 
William. We live as usual, tranquilly. I get up, or at 
least wake early; read and write till two; dine; go to 
Lord B.'s, and ride, or play billiards, as the weather 
permits; and sacrifice the evening either to light books 
or whoever happens to drop in. Our furniture, which 
is very neat, cost fewer shillings than that at Marlow 
did pounds sterling; and our windows are full of plants, 
which turn the sunny winter into spring. My health is 
better — my cares are lighter; and although nothing will 
cure the consumption of my purse, yet it drags on a sort 
of life in death, very like its master, and seems, like 
Fortunatus's, always empty yet never quite exhausted. 
You will have seen my Adonais and perhaps my Hellas, 
and I think, whatever you may judge of the subject, the 
composition of the first poem will not wholly displease 
you. I wish I had something better to do than furnish 
this jingling food for the hunger of oblivion, called 
verse, but I have not; and since you give me no encour- 
agement about India I cannot hope to have. 

How is your little star, and the heaven which contains 
the milky way in which it glimmers? 

Adieu. — Yours ever most truly, 

S. 

* Not finished. Shelley was drowned in the following August. 



[^t.26] WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

1794-1878 

To HIS Mother 

[his marriage] 

June, 1821. 
Dear Mother, — 

I hasten to send you the melancholy intelligence of 
what has lately happened to me. 

Early on the evening of the eleventh day of the present 
month I was at a neighboring house in this village. 
Several people of both sexes were assembled in one of 
the apartments, and three or four others, with myself, 
were in another. At last came in a little elderly gen- 
tleman, pale, thin, with a solemn countenance, pleuritic 
voice, hooked nose, and hollow eyes. It was not long 
before we were summoned to attend in the apartment 
where he and the rest of the company were gathered. 
We went in and took our seats; the little elderly gentle- 
man with the hooked nose prayed, and we all stood up. 
When he had finished, most of us sat down. The gentle- 
man with the hooked nose then muttered certain cabalist- 
ical expressions which I was too much frightened to re- 
member, but I recollect that at the conclusion I was 
given to understand that I was married to a young lady 
of the name of Frances Eairchild, whom I perceived 
standing by my side, and I hope in the course of a few 
months to have the pleasure of introducing to you as 
your daughter-in-law, which is a matter of some interest 
to the poor girl, who has neither father nor mother in 
the world. 

I have not "played the fool and married an Ethiop for 
the jewel in her ear." I looked only for goodness of 
heart, an ingenuous and affectionate disposition, a good 
understanding, etc., and the character of my wife is too 
frank and single-hearted to suffer me to fear that I may 
be disappointed. I do myself wrong; I did not look 
for these nor any other qualities, but they trapped me 
before I was aware, and now I am married in spite of 
myself. 

Thus the current of destiny carries us along. None but 
a madman would swim against the stream, and none but 



178 WILLIAM CULLEX BRYANT [^t. 37 

a fool would exert himself to swim with. It. The best 
way is to float quietly with the tide. So much for 
philosophy — now to business. ... 

Your affectionate son, 

William. 

[^t. 37] 

To E. H. Dana 
[cholera; journey to Illinois] 

New York, October 8, 1832. 
My dear Sir, — 

. . . You are right; we have had a fearful time in 
New York, the pestilence striking down its victims on 
the right hand and the left, often at noon-day, but mostly 
in .darkness, for of the thousands who had the disorder 
three quarters were attacked at the dead of night. I 
have been here from the 12th of July, when I returned 
from the westward, till the present time, coming every 
morning from Hoboken to attend to my daily occupation, 
every morning witnessing the same melancholy spectacle 
of deserted and silent streets and forsaken dwellings, and 
every day looking over and sending out to the world the 
list of the sick and dead. My own health and that of 
my wife and youngest child in the meantime have been 
bad, with a feeling in the stomach like that produced 
by taking lead or some other mineral poison. Since the 
second week in September the state of things has changed, 
and my own health was never better than it is at this 
moment. . . . 

I have seen the great West, where I ate corn bread and 
hominy, slept in log houses, with twenty men, women, 
and children in the same room. ... At Jacksonville, 
where my two brothers live, I got on a horse, and trav- 
elled about a hundred miles to the northward over the 
immense prairies, with scattered settlements, on the edges 
of the groves. These prairies, of a soft, fertile garden 
soil, and a smooth, undulating surface, on which you may 
put a horse to full speed, covered with high, thinly 
growing grass, full of weeds and gaudy flowers, and 
destitute of bushes or trees, perpetually brought to my 
mind the idea of their having been once cultivated. 
They look to me like the fields of a race which had 



I 



iEt. 42]* WILLIAM CULLEN BKYANT 179 

passed away, whose enclosures and habitations had de- 
cayed, but on whose vast and rich plains, smoothed and 
levelled by tillage, the forest had not yet encroached. . . . 



[^t. 42] 

To His Wife 
[a quarrel between editors] 

New York, August 21st, [1837.] 
My friends, when they meet me, congratulate me on 
being yet alive. You will ask what this means. On 
Saturday last I received a challenge. A good-natured, 
well-bred man, Reynolds, who formerly lectured on Cap- 
tain Symmes's 'Theory of the Earth," and who has 
been appointed historiographer of the expedition now 
fitting out for the South Seas, wallved into the office on 
"unpleasant business," as he called it, and presented me 
a written invitation to fight a duel, from a man named 
Holland, one of the editors of the "Times" newspaper. 
Holland had taken offence at something which appeared 
in the "Evening Post" on the subject of the "Times," 
and wrote to me for an explanation. My answer did not 
satisfy him ; he wrote again ; I declined giving any other 
answer, and so he asked me to fight. I told Mr. Reynolds 
that when Mr. Leggett,* a gentleman of strict honor, 
was associated with me in the conduct of the "Evening 
Post," he wrote Holland word that he was a scoundrel, 
which he chose to take quietly. I said that Holland must 
settle that affair first, and that then I would consider 
whether his note deserved any further reply. Reynolds 
was very anxious to persuade me to give some other 
answer, and said that the afi"air might easily be adjusted. 
He would not take back my note to Holland, so I wrote 
down what I had given above as my answer, and sent it 
by a boy. When you come down you shall see the cor- 
respondence. My friends are much amused at my having 
got into such a scrape, and laugh heartily at the idea 
that a popinjay who curls his whiskers should think to 
engage me in a duel. 

* William Leggett (1802-1839.) Fought a duel at Weehawken, with 
Blake of the Park Theatre. 



180 WILLIAM CULLEN BEYANT [.Et. 76 

[^t. 76] 

To Joseph H. Eichards 
[Bryant's manner of life at seventy-six] 

New York, March 30th, 1871. 
. . I rise early, at this time of the year about half 
past five ; in summer half an hour, or even an hour, earlier. 
Immediately, with very little encumbrance of clothing, 
I begin a series of exercises, for the most part designed 
to expand the chest, and at the same time call into action 
all the muscles and articulations of the body. These are 
performed with dumb-bells — the very lightest, covered 
with flannel — with a pole, a horizontal bar, and a light 
chair swung round my head. After a full hour, and 
sometimes more, passed in this manner, I bathe from 
head to foot. When at my place in the country I some- 
times shorten my exercises in the chamber, and, going 
out, occupy myself in some work which requires brisk 
motion. After my bath, if breakfast be not ready, I 
sit down to my studies till I am called. 

My breakfast is a simple one — hominy and milk, or, 
in place of hominy, brown bread, or oatmeal, or wheaten 
grits, and, in the season, baked sweet apples. Buckwheat 
cakes I do not decline, nor any other article of vegetable 
food, but animal food I never take at breakfast. Tea and 
coffee I never touch at any time; sometimes I take a 
cup of chocolate, which has no narcotic effect, and agrees 
with me very well. At breakfast I often take fruit, 
either in its natural state or freshly stewed. 

After breakfast I occupy myself for a while with my 
studies; and when in town I walk down to the office of 
the "Evening Post," nearly three miles distant, and 
after about three hours return, always walking, whatever 
be the weather or the state of the streets. In the coun- 
try I am engaged in my literary tasks till a feeling of. 
weariness drives me out into the open air, and I go upon 
my farm or into the garden, and prune the fruit-trees 
or perform some other work about them which they 
need, and then go back to my books. I do not often 
drive out, preferring to walk. 

In the country I dine early, and it is only at that meal 
that X take either meat or fish, and of these but a mod- 



JEt 44] THOMAS ARNOLD 181 

erate quantity, making my dinner mostly of vegetables. 
At the meal which is called tea I take only a little bread 
and butter, with fruit, if it be on the table. In town, 
where I dine later, I make but two meals a day. Fruit 
makes a considerable part of my diet, and I eat it at al- 
most any hour of the day without inconvenience. My 
drink is water, yet I sometimes, though rarely, take a 
glass of wine. I am a natural temperance man, finding 
myself rather confused than exhilarated by wine. I 
never meddle with tobacco, except to quarrel with its use. 
That I may rise early, I, of course, go to bed early; 
in town as early as ten; in the country somewhat earlier. 
For many years I have avoided in the evening every 
kind of literary occupation which tasks the faculties, such 
as composition, even to the writing of letters, for the 
reason that it excites the nerv^ous system and prevents 
sound sleep. My brother told me not long since that he 
had seen in a Chicago newspaper, and several other west- 
ern journals, a paragraph in which it was said that I 
am in the habit of taking quinine as a stimulant, that 
I have depended on the excitement it produces in writing 
my verses, and that, in consequence of using it in that 
way, I have become as deaf as a post. As to my deafness, 
you know that to be false; and the rest of the story is 
equally so. I abominate drugs and narcotics, and have 
always carefully avoided anything which spurs nature to 
exertions which it would not otherwise make. Even with 
my food I do not take the usual condiments, such as 
pepper and the like. 



[^t.44] THOMAS ARNOLD 

1795-1842 

To THE Rev. G. Cornish 

[objection to dickens; wordsworth] 

Fox How, July 6, 1839. 
... As I believe that the English universities are the 
best places in the world for those who can profit by them, 
so I think for the idle and self-indulgent they are about 
the very worst, and I would far rather send a boy to 
Van Diemen's Land, where he must work for his bread, 



182 THOMAS AENOLD [^t. 44 

than send him to Oxford to live in luxury, without any 
desire in his mind to avail himself of his advantages. 
Childishness in boys, even of good abilities, seems to 
me to be a growing fault, and I do not know to what to 
ascribe it, except to the great number of exciting books 
of amusement, like Pickwick and Nickleby, Bentley's 
Magazine, &c., &c. These completely satisfy all the in- 
tellectual appetite of a boy, which is rarely very vora- 
cious, and leave him totally palled, not only for his regu- 
lar work, which I could well excuse in comparison, but 
for good literature of all sorts, even for History and 
for Poetry. 

I went up to Oxford to the Commemoration, for the 
first time for twenty-one years, to see Wordsworth and 
Bunsen receive their degrees; and to me, remembering 
how old Coleridge inoculated a little knot of us with the 
love of Wordsworth, when his name was in general a 
byword, it was striking to witness the thunders of ap- 
plause, repeated over and over again, with which he was 
greeted in the theatre by Undergraduates and Masters 
of Arts alike. 



[^t. 44] 

To H. Balston 
[qualifications of a teacher] 

KuGBY, November 21, 1839. 

. . . With regard to the questions in your letter, I hold 
that to a great degree in the choice of a profession, 
"sua cuique Deus fit dira cupido," a man's inclination for 
a calling is a great presumption that he either is or will 
be fit for it. And in education this holds very strongly, 
for he who likes boys has probably a daily sympathy 
with them; and to be in sympathy with the mind you 
propose to influence is at once indispensable, and will 
enable you in a great degree to succeed in influencing it. 

Another point to which I attach much importance is 
liveliness. This seems to me an essential condition of 
sympathy with creatures so lively as boys are naturally, 
and it is a great matter to make them understand that 
liveliness is not folly or thoughtlessness. Now I think 



^t. 21] JOHN KEATS 183 

the prevailing manner amongst many very valuable men 
at Oxford is the very opposite to liveliness; and I think 
that this is the case partly with yourself; not at all from 
affectation, but from natural temper, encouragied, per- 
haps, rather than checked, by a belief that it is right 
and becoming. But this appears to me to .be in point of 
manner the great difference between a clergyman with a 
parish and a schoolmaster. It is an illustration of St. 
Paul's rule, "Rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep 
with them that weep." A clergyman's intercourse is very 
much with the sick and the poor, where liveliness would 
be greatly misplaced; but a schoolmaster's is with the 
young, the strong, and the happy, and he cannot get on 
with them unless in animal spirits he can sympathize 
with them, and show them that his thoughtfulness is not 
connected with selfishness and weakness. At least this 
applies, I think, to a young man ; for when a teacher gets 
to an advanced age, gravity, I suppose, would not mis- 
become him, for liveliness might then seem unnatural, and 
his sympathy with boys must be limited, I suppose, then, 
to their great interests rather than their feelings. . . . 



[^t. 21] JOHN KEATS 

1795-1821 
To J. H. Reynolds 

["l FIND THAT I CAXXOT EXIST -WITHOUT POETRy"] 

Carisbrooke, April 17th, 1817. 
My dear Reynolds, 

Ever since I wrote to my brother from Southampton, 
I have been in a taking, and at this moment I am about 
to become settled, for I have unpacked my books, put 
them into a snug corner, pinned up Haydon, Mary Queen 
[of] Scots, and Milton with his daughters in a row. In 
the passage I found a head of Shakespeare, which I had 
not before seen. It is most likely the same that George 
spoke so well of, for I like it extremely. Well, this head 
I have hung over my books, just above the three in a 
row, having first discarded a French Ambassador; now 
this alone is a good morning's work. Yesterday I went 
to Shanklin, which occasioned a great debate in my mind 



184 JOHN KEATS [.Et. 21 ' 

whether I should live there or at Carisbrooke. Shanklin 
is a most beautiful place; sloping wood and meadow 
ground reach round the Chine, which is a cleft between 
the cliffs, of the depth of nearly 300 feet at least. This 
cleft is filled with trees and bushes in the narrow part; 
and as it widens becomes bare, if it were not for prim- 
roses on one side, which spread to the very verge of the 
sea, and some fishermen's huts on the other, perched mid- 
way in the balustrades of beautiful green hedges along 
their steps down to the sands. But the sea, Jack, the 
sea, the little waterfall, then the white cliff, then St. 
Catherine's Hill, "the sheep in the meadows, the cows 
in the corn." Then why are you at Carisbrooke? say 
you. Because, in the first place, I should be at twice 
the expense, and three times the inconvenience; next, 
that from here I can see your continent from a little hill 
close by, the whole north angle of the Isle of Wight, with 
the water between us; in the third place, I see Caris- 
brooke Castle from my window, and have found several 
delightful wood-alleys, and copses, and quick freshes; as 
for primroses, the Island ought to be called Primrose 
Island, that is, if the nation of Cowslips agree thereto, 
of which there are divers clans just beginning to lift up 
their heads. Another reason of my fixing is, that I am 
more in reach of the places around me. I intend to walk 
over the Island, east, west, north, south. I have not seen 
many specimens of ruins. I don't think, however, I shall 
ever see one to surpass Carisbrooke Castle. The trench 
is overgrown with the smoothest turf, and the walls with 
ivy. The Keep within side is one bower of ivy; a colony 
of jackdaws have been there for many years. I daresay 
I have seen many a descendant of some old cawer who 
peeped through the bars at Charles the First, when he 
was there in confinement. On the road from Cowes to 
Newport I saw some extensive Barracks, which disgusted 
me extremely with the Government for placing such a 
nest of debauchery in so beautiful a place. I asked a man 
on the coach about this, and he said that the people had 
been spoiled. In the room where I slept at Newport, I 
found this on the window — "O Isle spoilt by the mili- 
tary!" 

The wind is in a sulky fit, and I feel that it would be 



JEt 21] JOHX KEATS 185 

no bad thing to be the favourite of some Fairy, who 
would give one the power of seeing how our friends got 
on at a distance. I should like, of all loves, a sketch of 
you, and Tom, and George in ink: which Haydon will 
do if you tell him how I want them. From want of regu- 
lar rest I have been rather narvus, and the passage in 
Lear, "Do you not hear the sea!" has haunted me in- 
tensely. 

It keeps eternal whisperings around 

Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell 

Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell 

Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. 

Often 'tis in such gentle temper found. 

That scarcely will the very smallest shell 

Be moved for days from whence it sometime fell, 

When last the winds of heaven were unbound. 

Oh ye! who have your eye-balls vexed and tired, 

Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea; 

Oh ye! whose ears are dinn'd with uproar rude. 

Or fed too much with cloying melody, — 

Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood 

Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired! 

I'll tell you what — on the 23rd was Shakespeare bom. 
Now if I should receive a letter from you, and another 
from my brother on that day, 'twould be a parlous good 
thing. Whenever you write, say a word or two on some 
passage in Shakespeare that may have come rather new 
to you, which must be continually happening, notwith- 
standing that we read the same play forty times — for in- 
stance, the following from the "Tempest" never struck 
me so forcibly as at present: — 

"Urchins 
Shall, for that vast of night that they may work. 
All exercise on thee," 

How can I help bringing to your mind the line — 
"In the dark backward and abysm of time." 

I find that I cannot exist without Poetry — without eter- 
nal Poetry; I began with a little, but habit has made me 



186 . JOHN KEATS [^t. 21 

a leviathan. I had become all in a tremble from not 
having written anything of late: the Sonnet over-leaf did 
me good; I slept the better last night for it; this morn- 
ing, however, I am nearly as bad again. Just now I 
opened Spenser, and the first lines I saw were these: — 

"The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought, 
And is with child of glorious great intent, 
Can never rest until it forth have brought 
Th' eternal brood of glory excellent." 

Let me know particularly about Haydon; ask him to 
write to me about Hunt, if it be only ten lines. I hope 
all is well. I shall forthwith begin my "Endymion," 
which I hope I shall have got some way into by the time 
you come, when we will read our verses in a delightful 
place I have set my heart upon, near the Castle. Give 
my love to your sisters severally. 

Your sincere friend, 

John Keats 

[^t. 21] 

To John Taylor " 

[''THAT HYDRA, THE DUN"] 

Margate, May 16th, 1817. 
My dear Sir, 

I am extremely indebted to you for your liberality in 
the shape of manufactured rag, value 20 1., and shall im- 
mediately proceed to destroy some of the minor heads of 
that Hydra the Dun; to conquer which the knight need 
have no sword, shield, cuirass, cuisses, herbadgeon, spear, 
casque, greaves, paldrons, spurs, chevron, or any other 
scaly commodity, but he need only take the Bank-note 
of Faith and Cash of Salvation, and set out against the 
monster, invoking the aid of no Archimago or Urganda, 
but finger me the paper, light as the Sybil's leaves in 
Virgil, whereat the fiend skulks oif with his tail between 
his legs. Touch him with this enchanted paper, and he 
whips you his head away as fast as a snail's horn; but 
then the horrid propensity he has to put it up again has 

*-0f the publishing firm Taylor and Hessey. 



^t. 22] JOHN KEATS 187 

discouraged many very valiant knights. He is such a 
never-ending, still-beginning, sort of a body, like my 
landlady of the Bell. I think I could make a nice little 
allegorical poem, called "The Dun," where we would 
have the Castle of Carelessness, the Drawbridge of Credit, 
Sir Novelty Fashion's expedition against the City of 
Tailors, &c., &c. I went day by day at my poem for a 
month; at the end of which time, the other day, I found 
my brain so overwrought, that I had neither rhyme nor 
reason in it, so was obliged to give up for a few days. I 
hope soon to be able to resume my work. I have endeav- 
oured to do so once or twice; but to no purpose. Instead 
of poetry, I have a swimming in my head, and feel all 
the eilects of a mental debauch, lowness of spirits, anxiety 
to go on, without the power to do so, which does not at 
all tend to my ultimate progression. However, to-morrow 
I will begin m.y next month. This evening I go to Can- 
terbury, having got tired of Margate; I was not right in 
my head when I came. At Canterbury I hope the re- 
membrance of Chaucer will set me forward like a billiard 
ball. I have some idea of seeing the Continent some 
time this summer. 

In repeating how sensible I am of your kindness, I 
remain, 

Your obedient servant and friend, 

JoHx Keats. 
[^t. 22] 

To J. H. Eeynolds 
[criticism of Wordsworth] 

Hampstead, Feb. 3, 1818. 
My dear Reynolds, 

I thank you for your dish of filberts. Would I could 
get a basket of them by way of dessert every day for the 
sum of twopence (two sonnets on Robin Hood sent by 
the twopenny post). Would we were a sort of ethereal 
pigs, and turned loose to feed upon spiritual mast and 
acorns! which would be merely being a squirrel and feed- 
ing upon filberts; for what is a squirj:el but an airy pig, 
or a filbert but a sort of archangelical acorn ? About the 
nuts being worth cracking, all I can say is, that where 
there are a throng of delightful images ready drawn, 



188 JOHN KEATS [^t. 22 

simplicity is the only thing. It may be said that we 
ought to read our contemporaries, that Wordsworth, &c., 
should have their due from us. But, for the sake of a 
few fine imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be 
bullied into a certain philosophy engendered in the whims 
of an egotist ? Every man has his speculations, but every 
man does not brood and peacock over them till he makes 
a false coinage and deceives himself. Many a man can 
travel to the very 5ourne of Heaven, and yet want con- 
fidence to put down his half-seeing. Sancho will invent 
a journey heavenward as well as anybody. We hate po- 
etry that has a palpable design upon us, and, if we do 
not agree, seems to put its hand into its breeches pocket. 
Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which 
enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze 
it with itself, but with its subject. How beautiful are 
the retired flowers! How would they lose their beauty 
were they to throng into the highway, crying out, "Ad- 
mire me, I am a violet! Dote upon me, I am a prim- 
rose!" Modern poets diifer from the Elizabethans in 
this: each of the moderns, like an Elector of Hanover, 
governs his petty state, and knows how many straws are 
swept daily from the causeways in all his dominions, and 
has a continual itching that all the housewives should 
have their coppers well scoured. The ancients were Em- 
perors of vast provinces; they had only heard of the re- 
mote ones, and scarcely cared to visit them. I will cut 
all this. I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in 
particular. Why should we be of the tribe of Manasseh, 
when we can wander with Esau? Why should we kick 
against the pricks, when we can walk on roses? Why 
should we be owls, when we can be eagles? Why be 
teased with "nice-eyed wagtails," when we have in sight 
"the cherub Contemplation?" Why with Wordsworth's 
"Matthew with a bough of wilding in his hand," when 
we can have Jacques "under an oak," &c. ? The secret 
of the "bough of wilding" will run through your head 
faster than I can write it. Old Matthew spoke to him 
some years ago on some nothing, and because he happens 
in an evening walk to imagine the figure of the old man, 
he must stamp it down in black and white, and it is 
henceforth sacred. I don't mean to deny Wordsworth's 



^t. 22] JOHN KEATS 189 

jrrandeur and Hunt's merit, but I mean to say we need 
not be teased with grandeur and merit when we can have 
them uncontaminated and unobtrusive. Let us have the 
old Poets and Kobin Hood. Your letter and its sonnets 
gave me more pleasure than will the Fourth Book ol 
"Childe Harold/' and the whole of anybody s liie and 

^^in'Teturn for your dish of filberts, I have gathered a 
few catkins. I hope they'll look pretty. . 

I hope you will like them— they are at least written m 
the spirit of outlawry. Here are the Mermaid lines:— 

Souls of Poets dead and gone. &c. 
In the hope that these scribblings will be some amuse- 
ment for you this evening, I remain, copying on the hill, 
Your sincere friend and co-scribbler, 

John Keats. 

r^t. 22] 

To Mr. Taylor 
[poetic axioms; "endymion"] 

Hampstead, 27 Feb., [1818.] 
My dear Taylor, 

In "Endvmion," I have most likely but moved 
into the go-cart from the leading-strings. In poetry I 
have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am Irom 
their centre. . 

1st. I think poetry should surprise by a ime excess, 
and not by singularity; it should strike the reader as a 
wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost 
a remembrance. , i li? 

2nd. Its touches of beauty should never be hali-way, 
thereby making the reader breathless, instead of content. 
The rise, the progress, the setting of imagery, _ should, 
like the sun, come natural to him, shme over him, and 
set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him m the 
luxury of twilight. But it is easier to thmk what poetry 
should be, than to write it. And this leads me to 

Another axiom— That if poetry comes not as naturally 
as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all. How- 
ever it may be with me, I cannot help looking mto new 
countries with "Oh, for a muse of fire to ascend! 1± 
"Endymion" serves me as a pioneer, perhaps 1 ought to 



190 JOHN KEATS [^t. 22 

be content for, thank God, I can read, and perhaps under- 
stand, bhakespeare to his depths; and I have, I am sure 
many fri_ends, who, if I fail, will attribute any change in 
my life and temper to humbleness rather than pride— to 
a cowermg under the wings of great poets, rather than 
to a bitterness that I am not appreciated. I am anxious 
to get Endymion" printed that I may forget it, and 
proceed. I have copied the Third Book, and begun the 
-bourth I will take care the printer shall not trip up 
my heels. ^ ^ 

Eemember me to Percy Street. 

Your sincere and obliged friend, 
John Keats. 

P- 8. You shall have a short preface in good time. 

[^t. 22] 

To Mr. Eice 

[MILTON AND SALMASIUS] 

My dear Bice, Te.gnmouth, 25 March, 1818. 

Being in the midst of your favourite Devon, I should 
not by rights, pen one word but it should contain a vast 
T^^Z-?} ""*' ^'''*°"' «"d learning; for I have heard 
that MiltoB, ere he wrote his answer to Salmaslus came 
into these parts, and for one whole month, roUed h'imsdf 
for three whole hours a day, in a certain meadow Tard 
by us, where the mark of his nose at equidistances is st[n 

S^rVh^'"' 'f^'''' "^ ^^'-l -eadow forthersai h tha 
after these rolhngs, not a nettle sprang np in a 1 the 
^even acres for seven years, and that from said ?ime a 
new sort of plant was made from the whitethorn "f a 

prrnt'daTT' ™^y,'""'=h -"d by the bucks V the 
present day to rap their boots withal. This account 
made me very naturally suppose that the nettles and 
thorns ethereahsed by the scholar's rotatory mot on and 
garnered m his head, thence flew, after a dew of fer'mTn 
tation, agamst the luckless Salmasius, and orcasioneTws 
wo id™r"/"'' """^^PPy ^"'J- What a happy ?hin„ 

S uo on"' '""''^ T^' °"i- ^^""K'^*^ anfmake^our 
minds up on any matter in five minutes, and remain 



^t 22] JOHN KEATS 191 

content, that is, build a sort of mental cottage of feel- 
ings, quiet and pleasant — to have a sort of philosophical 
back-garden, and cheerful holiday - keeping front one. 
But, alas ! this never can be ; for, as the material cottager 
knows there are such places as France and Italy, and the 
Andes, and burning mountains, so the spiritual cottager 
has knowledge of the terra semi-incognita of things un- 
earthly, and cannot, for his life, keep in the check-rein — 
or I should stop here, quiet and comfortable in my theory 
of nettles. You will see, however, I am obliged to run 
wild, being attracted by the load-stone, concatenation. 
No sooner had I settled the knotty point of Salmasius, 
than the devil put this whim into my head in the like- 
ness of one of Pythagoras's questionings — Did Milton do 
more good or harm in the world? He wrote, let me in- 
form you (for I have it from a friend who had it of ,) 

he wrote "Lycidas," "Comus," "Paradise Lost,'' and other 
Poems, with much delectable prose; he was moreover an 
active friend to man all his life, and has been since his 
death. Very good. But, my dear fellow, I must let you 
know that, as there is ever the same quantity of matter 
constituting this habitable globe, as the ocean, notwith- 
standing the enormous changes and revolutions taking 
place in some or other of its demesnes, notwithstanding 
waterspouts, whirlpools, and mighty rivers emptying 
themselves into it, it still is made up of the same bulk, 
nor ever varies the num*ber of its atoms; and, as a cer- 
tain bulk of water was instituted at the creation, so, very 
likely, a certain portion of intellect was spun forth into 
the thin air, for the brains of man to prey upon it. You 
will see my drift, without any unnecessary parenthesis. 
That which is contained in the Pacific could not lie in 
the hollow of the Caspian; that which was in Milton's 
head could not find room in Charles the Second's. He, 
like a moon, attracted intellect to its flow — it has not ebbed 
yet, but has left the shore-pebble all bare — I mean all 
bucks, authors of Hengist, and Castlereaghs of the present 
day, who, without Milton's gormandising, might have been 
all wise men. Now for as much as I was very predis- 
posed to a country I had heard you speak so highly of, I 
took particular notice of everything during my journey, 
and have bought some nice folio asses' skins for memo- 



192 JOHN KEATS [^t. 22 

randums. I have seen everything- but the wind — and 
that, they say, becomes visible by taking a dose of acorns, 
or sleeping one night in a hog-trough, with your tail to 
the sow-sow-west. 

I went yesterday to Dawlish fair. 

"Over the Hill and over the Dale, 
And over the Bourne to Dawlish, 
Where ginger -bread wives have a scanty sale. 
And ginger-bread nuts are smallish," &c. &c. 

Your sincere friend, 

John Keats. 
[^t. 22] 

To Mr. Taylor 

["get learning — GET UNDERSTANDING"] 

Teignmouth, 27 April, 1818. 
My dear Taylor, 

I think I did wrong to leave to you all the trouble of 
"Endymion." But I could not help it then — another 
time I shall be more bent to all sorts of troubles and 
disagreeables. Young men, for some time, have an idea 
that such a thing as happiness is to be had, and therefore 
are extremely impatient inider any unpleasant restrain- 
ing. In time, however, — of such stuff is the world about 
them, — they know better, and instead of striving from 
uneasiness, greet it as an habitual sensation, a pannier 
which is to weigh upon them through life. And in pro- 
portion to my disgust at the task is my sense of your 
kindness and anxiety. The book pleased me much. It 
is very free from faults; and, although there are one or 
two words that I should wish replaced, I see in many 
places an improvement greatly to the purpose. 

I was proposing to travel over the North this summer. 
There is but one thing to prevent me. I know nothing 
— I have read nothing — and I mean to follow Solomon's 
directions, "Get learning — get understanding." I find 
earlier days are gone by — I find that I can have no en- 
joyment in the world but continual drinking of knowl- 
edge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of 
doing some good to the world. Some do it with their 
society; some with their wit; some with their benevo- 



^t. 22] JOHN KEATS 193 

lence; some with a sort of power of conferring pleasure 
and good humour on all they meet — and in a thousand 
ways, all dutiful to the command of great nature. There 
is but one way for me. The road lies through applica- 
tion, study, and thought. I will pursue it; and, for that 
end, purpose retiring for some years. I have been hover- 
ing for some time between an exquisite sense of the lux- 
urious, and a love for philosophy: were I calculated for 
the former I should be glad. But as I am not, I shall 
turn all my soul to the latter. 

My brother Tom is getting better, and I hope I shall 
see both him and Reynolds better before I retire from 
the world. I shall see you soon, and have some talk about 
what books I shall take with me. 

Your very sincere friend, 

John Keats. 

iJEc. 22] 

To J. H. Reyxolds 
[on visiting burns's birthplace] 

Maybole, July 11 [1818]. 
My dear Reynolds, — 

I'll not run over the ground we have passed ; that would 
be nearly as bad as telling a dream — unless, perhaps, I 
do it in the manner of the Laputan printing press; that 
is, I put down mountains, rivers, lakes, dells, glens, rocks, 
and clouds with beautiful, enchanting, gothic, pictur- 
esque, — fine, delightful, enchanting, grand, sublime — a 
few blisters, &c. — and now you have our journey thus 
far; where I begin a letter to you because I am approach- 
ing Bums's cottage very fast. We have made continual 
inquiries from the time we left his tomb at Dumfries. 
His name, of course, is known all about: his great repu- 
tation among the plodding people is, "that he wrote a 
good mony sensible things." One of the pleasantest ways 
of annulling self is approaching such a shrine as the cot- 
tage of Burns: we need not think of his misery — that is 
all gone, bad luck to it! I shall look upon it hereafter 
with unmixed pleasure, as I do upon my Stratford-on- 
Avon day with Bailey. I shall fill this sheet for you in 
the Bardie's country, going no farther than this, till I 



194 JOHN KEATS [.Et. 22 

get to the town of Ayr, which will be a nine miles' walk 
to tea. 

We were talking on different and indifferent things, 
when, on a sudden, we turned a corner upon the immedi- 
ate country of Ayr. The sight was as rich as possible. I 
had no conception that the native place of Burns was so 
beautiful; the idea I had was more desolate: his Rigs of 
Barley seemed always to me but a few strips of green on 
a cold hill — Oh, prejudice! — It was as rich as Devon. I 
endeavored to drink in the prospect, that I might spin 
it out to you, as the silk-worm makes silk from the mul- 
berry leaves. I cannot recollect it. Besides all the beauty, 
there were the mountains of Annan Isle, black and huge 
over the sea. We came down upon everything suddenly; 
there were in our way the "bonny Doon," with the brig 
that Tam o'Shanter crossed, Kirk Alloway, Burns's Cot- 
tage, and then the Brigs of Ayr. First we stood upon 
the Bridge across the Boon, surrounded by every phan- 
tasy of green in tree, meadow, and hill; the stream of 
the Boon, as a farmer told us, is covered with trees "from 
head to foot." You know those beautiful heaths, so fresh 
against the weather of a summer's evening; there was 
one stretching along behind the trees. 

I wish I knew always the humour my friends would be 
in at opening a letter of mine, to suit it to them as nearly 
as possible. I could always find an egg-shell for melan- 
choly, and, as for merriment, a witty humour will turn 
anything to account. My head is sometimes in such a 
whirl in considering the million likings and antipathies 
of our moments, that I can get into no settled strain in 
my letters. My wig! Burns and sentimentality coming 
across you and Frank Floodgate in the office. Oh, 
Scenery, that thou shouldst be crushed between two puns I 
As for them, I venture the rascalliest in the Scotch region. 
I hope Brown does not put them in his journal; if he 
does, I must sit on the cutty-stool all next winter. We 
went to Kirk Alloway. "A prophet is no prophet in his 
own country." We went to the Cottage and took some 
whisky. I wrote a sonnet for the mere sake of writing 
some lines under the roof; they are so bad I cannot trans- 
cribe them. The man at the Cottage was a great bore 
with his anecdotes. I hate the rascal. His life consists 



.^t 22] JOHN KEATS 195 

in fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzziest. He drinks glasses five for the 
quarter and twelve for the hour; he is a mahogany-faced 
old jackass who knew Burns: he ought to have been kicked 
for having spoken to him. He calls himself "a curious 
old bitch," but he is a flat old dog. I should like to em- 
ploy Caliph Vathek to kick him. Oh, the flummery of a 
birthplace! Cant! Cant! Cant! It is enough to give 
a spirit the guts-ache! Many a true word, they say, is 
spoken in jest — this may be because his gab hindered my 
sublimity: the flat dog made me write a flat sonnet. My 
dear Reynolds, I cannot write about scenery and visit- 
ings. Fancy is indeed less than present palpable reality, 
but it is greater than remembrance. You would lift your 
eyes from Homer only to see close before you the real 
Isle of Tenedos. You would rather read Homer after- 
wards than remember yourself. One song of Bums's is 
of more worth to you than all I could think for a whole 
year in his native country. His misery is a dead weight 
upon the nimbleness of one's quill; I tried to forget it — 
to drink toddy without any care — to write a merry sonnet 
— it won't do — he talked with bitches, he drank with 
blackguards, he was miserable. We can see horribly clear, 
in the works of such a man, his whole life, as if we were 
God's spies. What were his addresses to Jean in the 
after part of his life? I should not speak so to you. — 
Yet, why not? You are not in the same case — ^you are 
in the right path — and you shall not be deceived. I have 
spoken to you against marriage, but it was general. The 
prospect in those matters has been to me so blank, that 
I have been not unwilling to die. I would not now, for I 
have inducements to life — I must see my little nephews 
in America, and I must see you marry youi lovely wife. 
My sensations are sometimes deadened for weeks together 
— but, believe me, I have more than once yearned for 
the time of your happiness to come, as much as I could 
for myself after the lips of Juliet. From the tenor of 
my occasional rhodomontade in chit-chat, you might have 
been deceived concerning me in these points. Upon my 
soul, I have been getting more and more close to you 
every day, ever since I knew you, and now one of the 
first pleasures I look to is your happy marriage — the more, 
since I have felt the pleasure of loving a sister-in-law. 



196 JOHN KEATS [ALt. 2-' 

I did not think it possible to become so much attached 
in so short a time. Things like these, and they are real, 
have made me resolve to have a care of my health — you 
must be as careful. ... 

Tell my friends I do all I can for them, that is, drink 
their health in Toddy. Perhaps I may have some lines, 
by-and-by, to send you fresh, on your own letter. 

Your affectionate friend, 
John Keats. 
[iEt. 22] 

To Bexjamix Bailey 
[the society of women] 

IXVERARY, July IS [1818]. 
My dear Bailey, — 

The only day I have had the chance of seeing you when 
you were last in London, 1 took every advantage of, — 
some devil led you out of the way. Now I have written 
to Reynolds to tell me where you will be in Cumberland 
— so that I cannot miss you. . . . And here, Bailey, I 
will say a few words, written in a sane and sober mind 
(a very scarce thing with me), for they may, hereafter, 
save you a great deal of trouble about me, which you do 
not deserve, and for which I ought to be bastinadoed. I 
carry all matters to an extreme; so that when I have any 
little vexation, it grows, in five minutes, into a theme for 
Sophocles. Then, and in that temper, if I write to any 
friend, I have so little self-possession, that I give him 
matter for grieving, at the very time, perhaps, when I am 
laughing at a pun. Your last letter made me blush for 
the pain I had given you. I know my own disposition 
so well that I am certain of writing many times here- 
after in the same strain to you : now, you know how far 
to believe in them. You must allow for Imagination. I 
know I shall not be able to help it. 

I am sorry you are grieved at my not continuing my 
visits to Little Britain. Yet I think I have, as far as a 
man can do who has books to read and subjects to think 
upon. For that reason I have been nowhere else except 
to Wentworth Place, so nigh at hand. Moreover, I have 
been too often in a state of health that made it prudent 
not to hazard the night air. Yet, further, I will confess 



^t. 22] JOHN KEATS 197 

to you that I cannot enjoy society, small or numerous. 
I am certain that our Fair friends are glad I should come 
for the mere sake of my coming; but I am certain I bring 
with me a vexation they are better without. If I can 
possibly, at any time, feel my temper coming upon me, 
r refrain even from a promised visit. I am certain I have 
not a right feeling towards women — at this moment I am 
striving to be just to them, but I cannot. Is it because 
they fall so far beneath my boyish imagination? When 
I was a schoolboy I thought a fair woman a pure goddess; 
my mind was a soft nest in which some one of them slept, 
though she knew it not. I have no right to expect more 
than their reality. I thought them ethereal, above men. 
I find them perhaps equal — great by comparison is very 
small. Insult may be inflicted in more ways than by 
word or action. One who is tender of being insulted does 
not like to think an insult against another. I do not like 
to think insult in a lady's company. I commit a crime 
with her which absence would not have known. Is it not 
extraordinary ? — when among men, I have no evil 
thoughts, no malice, no spleen; I feel free to speak or 
to be silent; I can listen, and from everyone I can learn; 
my hands are in my pockets, I am free froin all suspicion, 
and comfortable. When I am among women, I have 
evil thoughts, malice, spleen ; I cannot speak, or be silent ; 
I am full of suspicions, and therefore listen to nothing; 
I am in a hurry to be gone. You must be charitable, and 
put all this perversity to my being disappointed since 
my boyhood. Yet with such feelings I am happier alone, 
among crowds of men, by myself, or with a friend or 
two. With all this, trust me, I have not the least idea 
that men of different feelings and inclinations are more 
short-sighteJ than myself. I never rejoiced more than 
at my brother's marriage, and shall do so at that of any 
of my friends. I must absolutely get over this — but how ? 
the only way is to find the root of the evil, and so cure it, 
"with backward mutterings of dissevering power." That 
is a difficult thing; for an obstinate prejudice can seldom 
be produced but from a gordian complication of feelings, 
which must take time to unravel, and care to keep un- 
ravelled. I could say a good deal about this, but I will 
leave it, in the hopes of better and more worthy disposi- 



198 JOHN KEATS [^Et. 22 

tions — and, also, content that I am wronging no one, for, 
after all, I do think better of womankind than to sup- 
pose they care whether Mister John Keats, five feet high, 
likes them or not. You appeared to wish to know my 
moods on this subject; don't think it a bore, my dear 
fellow — it shall be my Amen. 

I should not have consented to myself, these four 
months, tramping in the Highlands, but that I thought 
it would give me more experience, rub off more prejudice, 
use [me] to more hardship, identify finer scenes, load me 
with grander mountains, and strengthen more my reach 
in poetry, than would stopping at home among books, 
even though I should reach Homer. By this time I am 
comparatively a mountaineer; I have been among wilds 
and mountains too much to break out much about their 
grandeur. I have fed upon oat-cake not long enough to 
be very much attached to it. The first mountains I saw, 
though not so large as some I have since seen, weighed 
very solemnly upon me. The effect is wearing away, yet 
I like them mainly. We have come this evening with 
a guide — for without was impossible — into the middle of 
the Isle of Mull, pursuing our cheap journey to lona, 
and perhaps Staff a. We would not follow the common 
and fashionable mode, from the great imposition of 
expense. . . . 

You say I must study Dante: well, the only books I 
have with me are those three little volumes. I read that 
fine passage you mention a few days ago. Your letter 
for.owed me from Hampstead to Port Patrick, and thence 
to Glasgow. You must think me, by this time, a very 
pretty fellow. . . . Brown keeps on writing volumes of 
adventure to Dilke. When we get in of an evening, and 
I have perhaps taken my rest on a couple of chairs, he 
affronts my indolence and luxury, by pulling out of his 
knapsack, first, his paper; secondly, his pens; and lastly, 
his ink. Now I would not care if he would change a little. 
I say now, why not, Bailey, take out his pens first some- 
times. But I might as well tell a hen to hold up her head 
before she drinks, instead of afterwards. 

Your affectionate friend, 

John Keats. 



^t 22] JOHN KEATS 199 

r^t. 22] To Mr. Hessey 

["a severe critic on his own works"] 

9th Oct., 1818 
My dear Hessey, 

You are very good in sending me the letter from the 
Chronicle, and I am very bad in not acknowledging such 
a kindness sooner: pray forgive me. It has so chanced 
that I have had that paper every day. I have seen to- 
day's. I cannot but feel indebted to those gentlemen who 
have taken my part. As for the rest, I begin to get a 
little acquainted with my o^vn strength and weakness. 
Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man 
whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe 
critic on his own works. My own domestic criticism 
has given me pain without comparison beyond what 
"Blackwood" or the "Quarterly" could possibly inflict: 
and also when I feel I am right, no external praise can 
give me such a glow as my own solitary reperception and 
ratification of what is fine. J. S. is perfectly right in 
regard to the "slip-shod Endymion." That it is so is no 
fault of mine. No! though it may sound a little para- 
doxical, it is as good as I had power to make it by my- 
self. Had I been nervous about its being a perfect piece, 
and with that view asked advice, and trembled over every 
page, it would not have been written; for it is not in 
my nature to fumble. I will write independently. I 
have written independently without judgment. I may 
write independently, and with judgment, hereafter. The 
Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a 
man. It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by 
sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is cre- 
ative must create itself. In "Endymion" I leaped head- 
long into the sea, and thereby have become better ac- 
quainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the 
rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and 
piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. 
I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail 
than not be among the greatest. But I am nigh getting 
into a rant; so, with remembrances to Taylor and Wood- 
house, &c., 1 am, Yours very sincerely, 

John Keats. 



200 JOHN KEATS [.Et. 22 

[.Et. 22] 

To Mr. Woodhouse 

["l AM AMBITIOUS OF DOIXG THE WORLD SOME GOOd"] 

[Postmark, Hampstead, 17 Oct., 1818.] 
My dear ^Voodhous 

Your letter gave me great satisfaction, more on account 
of its friendliness than any relish of that matter in it 
which is accounted so acceptable in the '%enus irritabile." 
The best answer I can give you is in a clerklike manner 
to make some observations on two principal points which 
seem to point like indices into the midst of the whole 
pro and con about genius, and views, and achievements, 
and ambition, et coetera. 1st. As to the poetical charac- 
ter itself (I mean that sort, of which, if I am anything, 
I am a member; that sort distinguished from the Words- 
worthian, or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se, 
and stands alone), it is not itself — it has no self— it is 
everything and nothing — it has no character — it enjoys 
light and shade — it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high 
or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated, — it has as much 
delight in conceiving an lago as an Imogen. What 
shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon 
poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side 
of things, any more than from its taste for the bright 
one, because they both end in speculation. A poet is the 
most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has 
no identity; he is continually in for, and filling, some 
other body. The sun, the moon, the sea, and men and 
women, who are creatures of impulse, are poetical, and 
have about them an unchangeable attribute; the poet has 
none, no identity. He is certainly the most unpoetical 
of all God's creatures. If, then, he has no self, and if I 
am^ a poet, where is the wonder that I should say I would 
write no more ? Might I not at that very instant have 
been cogitating on the characters of Saturn and Ops ? It 
is a wretched thing to confess, but it is a very fact, that 
not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an 
opinion growing out of my identical nature. How can 
it, when I have no nature ? When I am in a room with 
people, if I ever am free from speculating on creations 
of my own brain, then, not myself goes home to myself. 



.¥A. 22] JOHN KEATS 201 

but the Identity of every one In the room begins to press 
upon me, [so] that I am In a very little time annihilated 
— not only among men; It would be the same In a nursery 
of children. I know not whether I make myself wholly 
understood : I hope enough so to let you see that no de- 
pendence is to be placed on what I said that day. 

In the second place, I will speak of my views, and of 
the life I purpose to myself. I am ambitious of doing 
the world some good: If I should be spared, that may be 
the work of maturer years — in the Interval I will assay 
to reach to as high a summit in poetry as the nerve be- 
stowed upon me will suffer. The faint conceptions I 
have of poems to come bring the blood frequently into 
my forehead. All I hope is, that I may not lose all In- 
terest In human affairs — that the solitary indifference I 
feel for applause, even from the finest spirits, will not 
blunt any acuteness of vision I may have. I do not think 
it will. I feel assured I should write from the mere 
yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even It 
my night's labours should be burnt every morning, and 
no eye ever shine upon them. But even now I am per- 
haps not speaking from myself, but from some character 
In whose soul I now live. 

I am sure, however, that this next sentence Is from my- 
self. I feel your anxiety, good opinion, and friendship, 
In the highest degree, and am 

Yours most sincerely, 

John Keats. 
[^t. 22] 

To George Keats 

["l think i spiall be among the english poets after my 

death"] 

Oct. 29, 1818. 
My dear George, 

... I came by ship from Inverness, and was nine 
days at sea without being sick. A little qualm now and 
then put me in mind of you; however, as soon as you 
touch the shore all the horrors of sickness are soon for- 
gotten, as was the case with a lady on board, who could 
not hold her head up all the way. We had not been into 
the Thames an hour before her tongue began to some 



202 JOHN KEATS [JFA. 22 

tune — paying- off, as it was fit she should, all old scores. 
I was the only Englishman on board. There was a down- 
right Scotchman, who, hearing that there had been a bad 
crop of potatoes in England, had brought some triumph- 
ant specimens from Scotland. These he exhibited with 
natural pride to all the ignorant lightermen and water- 
men from the Nore to the Bridge. I fed upon beef all 
the way, not being able to ^at the thick porridge which 
the ladies managed to manage, with large, awkward, horn- 
spoons into the bargain. Eeynolds has returned from a 
six-weeks^ enjoyment in Devonshire; he is well, and per- 
suades me to publish my "Pot of Basil," as an answer to 
the attack made oh me in "Blackwood's Magazine" and 
the "Quarterly Review." There have been two letters in 
my defence in the Chronicle, and one in the Examiner, 
copied from the Exeter paper, and written by Reynolds! 
I don't know who wrote those in the Chronicle. This is 
a mere matter of the moment : I think I shall be among 
the English Poets after my death. Even as a matter of 
present interest, the attempt to crush me in the "Quar- 
terly" has only brought me more into notice, and it is a 
common expression among book-men, "I wonder the 
'Quarterly' should cut its own throat." It does me not 
the least harm in society to make me appear little and 
ridiculous: I know when a man is superior to me, and 
give him all due respect; he will be the last to laugh at 
me; and, as for the rest, I feel that I make an impres- 
sion upon them which ensures me personal respect while 
i am m sight, whatever they may say when my back is 
turned. 

^ . ; . Tom is rather more easy than he has been, but 
IS still so nervous that I cannot speak to him of you •— 
indeed it is the care I have had to keep his mind aloof 
from feelings too acute, that has made this letter so ram- 
bling. I did not like to write before him a letter he knew 
was to reach your hands; I cannot even now ask him for 
any message; his heart speaks to you. 

Be as happy as you can, and believe me, dear Brother 
and bister, 

Your anxious and affectionate Brother, 

rr.1 . . 1 . 1 -, John. 

Inis is my birth-day. 



.Et. 23] JOHN KEATS 203 

[.Et. 23] 

To Miss Fanny Brawne 

["my uneasy spirits — MY UNGUESSED FATe"] 

Winchester, August, ITth [1819]. 
My dear Girl, — 

What shall I say for myself? I have been here four 
days and not yet written you — 'tis true I have had many 
teasing letters of business to dismiss — and I have been 
in the claws, like a serpent in an Eagle's, of the last act 
of our Tragedy. This is no excuse; I know it; I do not 
presume to offer it. I have no right either to ask a speedy 
answer to let me know how lenient you are — I must re- 
main some days in a Mist — I see you through a Mist : as 
I daresay you do me by this time. Believe in the first 
letters I wrote you : I assure you I felt as I wrote — T 
could not write so now. The thousand images I have had 
pass through my brain — my uneasy spirits — my imguessed 
fate — all spread as a veil between me and you. Remem- 
ber I have had no idle leisure to brood over you — 'tis well 
perhaps I have not. I could not have endured the throng 
of jealousies that used to haunt me before I liad plunged 
so deeply into imaginary interests. I would fain, as my 
sails are set, sail on without an interruption for a Brace 
of Months longer — I am in complete cue — in the fever; 
and shall in these four Months do an immense deal. This 
Page as my eye skims over it I see is excessively unlover- 
like and ungallant — I cannot help it — I am no officer in 
yawning quarters; no Parson-Romeo. My Mind is 
heap'd to the full; stuff'd like a cricket ball — if I strive 
to fill it more it would burst. I know the generality of 
women would hate me for this; that I should have so 
unsoften'd, so hard a Mind as to forget them; forget the 
brightest realities for the dull imagination of my own 
Brain. But I conjure you to give it a fair thinking; and 
ask yourself whether 'tis not better to explain my feelings 
to you, than write artificial Passion. — Besides, you would 
see through it. It would be vain to strive to deceive you. 
'Tis harsh, harsh, I know it. My heart seems now made of 
iron — I could not write a proper answer to an invitation to 
Idalia. You are my Judge : my forehead is on the ground. 
You seem offended at a little simple innocent childish play- 



204 JOHN KEATS [.Et. 23 

fulness in my last. I did not seriously mean to say that 
you were endeavouring to make me keep my promise. I 
beg your pardon for it. 'Tis but just your Pride should 
take the alarm — seriously. You say I may do as I please 
— I do not think with any conscience I can; my cash re- 
sources are for the present stopp'd; I fear for some time. 
I spend no money, but it increases my debts. I have all 
my life thought very little of these matters — they seem 
not to belong to me. It may be a proud sentence; but by 
Heaven I am as entirely above all matters of interest as 
the Sun is above the Earth — and though of my own money 
I should be careless, of my Friends' I must be spare. 
You see how I go on — like so many strokes of a hammer. 
I cannot help it — I am impell'd, driven to it. I am not 
happy enough for silken Phrases, and silver sentences. I 
can no more use soothing words to you tha.n if I were at 
this moment engaged in a charge of Cavalry. Then you 
will say I should not write at all. Should I not? This 
Winchester is a fine place: a beautiful Cathedral and 
many other ancient buildings in the Environs. The little 
coffin of a room at Shanklin is changed for a large room, 
where I can promenade at my pleasure — looks out onto a 
beautiful — blank side of a house. It is strange I should 
like it better than the view of the sea from our window 
at Shanklin. I began to hate the very posts there — the 
voice of the old Lady over the way was getting a great 
Plague. The Fisherman's face never altered any more 
than our black teapot — the knob however was knock'd off, 
to my little relief. I am getting a great dislike of the 
picturesque; and can only relish it over again by seeing 
you enjoy it. One of the pleasantest things I have seen 
lately was at Cowes. The Eegent in^his Yatch (I think 
they spell it) was anchored opposite — a beautiful vessel — 
and all the Yatchs and boats on the coast were passing 
and repassing it; and circuiting and tacking about it in 
every direction — I never beheld anything so silent, light, 
and graceful. — As we pass'd over to Southampton, there 
was nearly an accident. There came by a Boat well 
mann'd, with two naval officers at the stern. Our Bow- 
lines took the top of their little mast and snapped it off 
close by the board. Had the mast been a little stouter 
they would have been upset. In so trifling an event I 



^t. 23] JOHN KEATS 205 

could not help admiring our seamen — neither officer nor 
man in the whole Boat moved a muscle — they scarcely 
notic'd it even with words. Forgive me for this ilint- 
worded Letter, and believe and see that I cannot think 
of you without some sort of energy — though mal a propos. 
Even as I leave off it seems to me that a few more mo- 
ments' thought of you would uncrystallize and dissolve 
me. I must not give way to it — but turn to my writing 
again — if I fail I shall die hard. O my love, your lips 
are growing sweet again to my fancy — I must forget them. 
Ever your affectionate 

Keats. 

[^t. 23] 

To J. H. Keynolds 
["the top thing in the world"] 

Winchester, 
August 25, [1819.] 
My dear Reynolds, 

By this post I write to Eice, who will tell you why we 
have left Shanklin, and how we like this place. I have 
indeed scarcely anything else to say, leading so monoto- 
nous a life, except I was to give you a history of sensa- 
tions and day-nightmares. You would not find me at 
all unhappy in it, as all my thoughts and feelings, which 
are of the selfish nature, home speculations, every day 
continue to make me more iron. I am convinced more 
and more, day by day, that fine w^riting is, next to fine 
doing, the top thing in the world; the "Paradise Lost" 
becomes a greater wonder. The more I know what my 
diligence may in time probably effect, the more does my 
heart distend with pride and obstinacy. I feel it in my 
power to become a popular writer. I feel it in my strength 
to refuse the poisonous suffrage of a public. My own 
being, which I know to be, becomes of more consequence 
to me than the crowds of shadows in the shape of men 
and women that inhabit a kingdom. The soul is a world 
of itself, and has enough to do in. its own home. Those 
whom I know already, and who have grown as it were 
a part of myself, I could not do without ; but for the rest 
of mankind, they are as much a dream to me as Milton's 



206 JOHN KEATS [-Et.. 23 

"Hierarchies." I think if I had a free and healthy and 
lasting organisation of heart, and lungs as strong as an 
ox's, so as to be able to bear unhurt the shock of extreme 
thought and sensation without weariness, I could pass my 
life very nearly alone, though it should last eighty years. 
But I feel my body too weak to support me to the height ; 
I am obliged continually to check myself, and be nothing. 
It would be vain for me to endeavour after a more rea- 
sonable manner of writing to you. I have nothing to 
speak of but myself, and what can I say but what I feel ? 
If you should have any reason to regret this state of ex- 
citement in me, I will turn the tide of your feelings in 
the right channel, by mentioning that it is the only state 
for the best sort of poetry — that is all I care for, all I live 
for. Forgive me for not filling up the whole sheet ; letters 
become so irksome to me, that the next time I leave Lon- 
don I shall petition them all to be spared me. To give me 
credit for constancy, and at the same time waive letter 
writing, will be the highest indulgence I can think of. 
Ever your aifectionate friend, 

John Keats. 

[^t. 23] 

To J. H. Keynolds 
["season of mists and mellow fruitfulness"] 

Winchester, 
22nd Sept., 1819. 
My dear Reynolds,, 

I was very glad to hear from Woodhouse that you 
would meet in the country. I hope you will pass some 
pleasant time together; which I wish to make pleasanter 
by a brace of letters, very highly to be estimated, as 
really I have had very bad luck with this sort of game 
this season. I ''kepen in solitarinesse," for Brown has 
gone a-visiting. I am surprised myself at the pleasure I 
live alone in. I can give j^ou no news of the place here, 
or any other idea of it but what I have to this effect 
written to George. Yesterday, I say to him, was a grand 
day for Winchester. They elected a mayor. It was in- 
deed high time the place should receive some sort of ex- 
citement. There was nothing going on — all asleep — not 



^t. 23] JOHN KEATS 207 

an old maid's sedan returning from a card-party; and if 
any old women got tipsy at Christenings they did not ex- 
pose it in the streets. 

The side streets here are excessively maiden-lady-like; 
the door-steps always fresh from the flannel. The knock- 
ers have a staid, serious, nay almost awful quietness about 
them. I never saw so quiet a collection of lions' and 
rams' heads. The doors are most part black, with a little 
brass handle just above the keyhole, so that in Winches- 
ter a man may very quietly shut himself out of his own 
house. 

How beautiful the season is now. How fine the air — - 
a temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, 
chaste weather — Dian skies. I never liked stubble-fields 
so much as now — aye, better than the chilly green of the 
Spring. Somehow, a stubble plain looks warm, in the 
same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me 
so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it. 

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," &c. 

I hope you are better employed than in gaping after 
weather. I have been, at different times, so happy as not 
to know what weather it was. No, I will not copy a par- 
cel of verses. I always somehow associate Chatterton 
with Autumn. He is the purest writer in the English 
language. He has no French idiom or particles, like 
Chaucer; 'tis genuine English idiom in English words. 
I have given up "Hyperion" — there were too many Mil- 
tonic inversions in it — Miltonic verse cannot be written 
but in an artful, or, rather, artist's humour. I wish to 
give myself up to other sensations. English ought to be 
kept up. It may be interesting to you to pick out some 
lines from "Hyperion," and put a mark, j-, to the false 
beauty, proceeding from art, and one, ||, to the true voice 
of feeling. Upon my soul, 'twas imagination; I cannot 
make the distinction — every now and then there is a Mil- 
tonic intonation — but I cannot make the division prop- 
erly. ... 

Ever your affectionate friend, 

John Keats. 



[^t. 27] THOMAS CAKLYLE 

1795-1881 
To Jane Welsh 
[a visit in prospect] 
3, Moray Street, [Edin.] 17 April, 1823. 
My dear Jane, — 

I have not been so glad this month as when Dr. Eyffe 
poked in his little farthing-face yesterday, with such a 
look of glad intelligence: I knew he brought me tidings 
from the East. The Doctor absolutely seemed to me one 
of the prettiest dapper little gentlemen I had ever set 
eyes on — the Letter was so large, and he handed it in 
with such a grace. You cannot think how the Devil had 
been tempting me about you for the four preceding days : 
I imagined — But now we have no time for that. 

It is but half an instant since I finished this wretched 
bundle of papers, at the sight of which you are turned 
so pall: "they will yet make you paller' — count on that. 
You must read them all over with the eye not of a friend, 
but of a critic: I must have your voice and decision and 
advice about twenty things before they go away. Be- 
sides I want to secure at least three readers — you, my- 
self, and the Printer's devil : more I can do without. The 
thing is absolutely execrable: I have written as if I had 
been steeped in Lethe to the chin. "My soul is black as 
the middle of the night Lady" — or rather gray and heavy 
as the middle of a Liddesdale mist. But never mind: 
tear the ugly thing to pieces, and give me your severe 
and solid criticism and counsel, when you arrive. 

So you are to be here on Saturday. Heaven be thanked 
for it — I shall see my owq Jane yet after all! Do con- 
trive some reading of German or something that will 
bring us to meet together daily ,^ — do, if it lies within the 
compass of your utmost ingenuity. You are a good crea- 
ture and full of wiles: do exert them for me! We are 
not to leave Town till about the 20th of May after all ; I 
am still free_ between one o'clock and seven every day : I 
expect all things from your kindness and never-failing 
^'devices." 

Here is an ass come in from Glasgow and I must leave 
208 



J^t. 29] THOMAS CARLYLE 209 

you. May the Devil comfort him — in his own good time : 
I had still half an hour to spend with you. 

You will let me know the first convenient moment after 
you arrive. Write to me at any rate, if you cannot see 
me on Saturday: I shall be very fretful else. Adieu my 
dearest Jane! God bless you always! 

I am ever yours, 

Thomas Carlyle. 

Excuse this haste and nonsense: I have not been so 
spurred for a twelve-month. There is no hurry in nature 
with the Books. 

What a preux chevalier your Teutscher* was! 



[^t. 29] 

To Alexander Carlyle 

["life of SCHILLER ;'' LOXDOX A BABEL AND A WEX] 

23 Southampton Street, 
PENTON\qLLE, 14th December, 1824. 
My dear Allele, — 

. . . Your letter found me in due season; and a wel- 
come visitant it was. I had not got the Courier that pre- 
ceded it, and the intelligence of your proceedings and 
welfare was no small relief to me. You must thank our 
Mother in my name in the warmest terms for her kind 
note, which I have read again and again with an atten- 
tion rarely given to more polished compositions. The 
sight of her rough true-hearted writing is more to me 
than the finest penmanship and the choicest rhetoric. It 
takes me home to honest kindness, and affection that will 
never fail me. You also I must thank for your graphic 
picture of Mainhill and its neighbourhood. How many 
changes happen in this restless roundabout of life within 
a little space! . . . 

In London, or rather in my own small sphere of it, there 
has nothing sinister occurred since I wrote last. After 
abundant scolding, which sometimes rose to the very bor- 
ders of bullying, these unhappy people [the publishers] are 
proceeding pretty regularly with the Book; a fifth part 

* -\n insistent German beggar who had annoyed Miss Welsh. 



210 THOMAS CARLYLE [^t. 29 

of it is already printed; they are also getting a portrait 
of Schiller engraved for it; and I hope in about six weeks 
the thing will be otf my hands. It will make a reasonable- 
looking book; somewhat larger than a volume of Meister, 
and done in somewhat of the same style. In the course 
of printing I have various matters to attend to; proofs 
to read ; additions, alterations to make ; which^ furnishes 
me with a very canny occupation for the portion of the 
day I can devote to labour. I work some three or four 
hours; read, for amusement chiefly, about as long; walk 
about these dingy streets, and talk with originals for the 
rest of the day. On the whole I have not been happier 
for many a long month: I feel content to let things take 
their turn till I am free of my engagements; and then — 
for a stern and serious tuffle with my Fate, which I have 
vowed and determined to alter from the very bottom, 
health and all! This will not be impossible, or even I 
think extremely difficult. Far beyond a million of "weaker 
vessels" than I are sailing very comfortably along the tide 
of life just here. What good is it to whine and whimper ? 
Let every man that has an ounce of strength in him get 
up and put it forth in Heaven's name, and labour that 
his "soul may live." 

Of this enormous Babel of a place I can give you no 
account in writing: it is like the heart of all the uni- 
verse; and the flood of human effort rolls out of it and 
into it with a violence that almost appals one's very sense. 
Paris scarcely occupies a quarter of the ground, and does 
not seem to have the twentieth part of the business. O 
that our father saw Holborn in a fog! with the black 
vapour brooding over it, absolutely like fluid ink; and 
coaches and wains and sheep and oxen and wild people 
rushing on with bellowings and shrieks and thundering 
din, as if the earth in general were gone distracted. To- 
day I chanced to pass through Smithfield, when the mar- 
ket was three-fourths over. I mounted the steps of a 
door, and looked abroad upon the area, an irregular space 
of perhaps thirty acres in extent, encircled with old dingy 
brick-built houses, and intersected with wooden pens for 
the cattle. What a scene! Innumerable herds of fat 
oxen, tied in long rows, or passing at a trot to their sev- 
eral shambles; and thousands of graziers, drovers, butch- 



^.t. 29] THOMAS CARLYLE 211 

ers, cattle-brokers with their quilted frocks and long goads 
pushing on the hapless beasts; hurrying to and fro in 
confused parties, shouting, jostling, cursing, in the midst 
of rain and shairn, and braying discord such as the imagi- 
nation cannot figure. Then there are stately streets and 
squares, and calm green recesses to which nothing of 
this abomination is permitted to enter. No wonder Cob- 
bett calls the place a Wen. It is a monstrous Wen ! The 
thick smoke of it beclouds a space of thirty square miles; 
and a million of vehicles, from the dog or cuddy-barrow 
to the giant waggon, grind along its streets for ever. 1 
saw a six-horse wain the other day with, I think, Number 
200,000 and odds upon it ! 

There is an excitement in all this, which is pleasant 
as a transitory feeling, but much against my taste as a 
permanent one. I had much rather visit London from 
time to time, than live in it. There is in fact no right 
life in it that I can find : the people are situated here like 
plants in a hot-house, to which the quiet influences of 
sky and earth are never in their unadulterated state ad- 
mitted. It is the case with all ranks: the carman with 
his huge slouch-hat hanging half-way down his back, con- 
sumes his breakfast of bread and tallow or hog's lard, 
sometimes as he swags along the streets, always in a hur- 
ried and precarious fashion, and supplies the deficit by 
continual pipes, and pots of beer. The fashionable lady 
rises at three in the afternoon, and begins to live towards 
midnight. Between these two extremes, the same false 
and tumultuous manner of existence more or less infests 
all ranks. It seems as if you were for ever in "an inn," 
the feeling of home in our acceptation of the term is not 
known to one of a thousand. You are packed into paltry 
shells of brick-houses (calculated to endure for forty 
years, and then fall) ; every door that slams to in the 
street is audible in your most secret chamber; the neces- 
saries of life are hawked about through multitudes of 
hands, and reach you, frequently adulterated, always at 
rather more than twice their cost elsewhere; people's 
friends must visit them by rule and measure; and when 
you issue from your door, you are assailed by vast shoals 
of quacks, and showmen, and street sweepers, and pick- 
pockets, and mendicants of every degree and shape, all 



212 THOMAS CARLYLE [.Et. 29 

plying in noise or silent craft their several vocations, all 
in their hearts like "lions ravening- for their prey." The 
blackguard population of the place is the most consum- 
mately blackguard of anything I ever saw. 

Yet the people are in general a frank, jolly, well-living, 
kindly people. You get a certain v^ay in their good graces 
with great ease : they want little more with you than now 
and then a piece of recreating conversation, and you are 
quickly on terms for giving and receiving it. Farther, I 
suspect, their nature or their habits seldom carry or ad- 
mit them. I have found one or two strange mortals, whom 
I sometimes stare to see myself beside. There is Crabbe 
Robinson, an old Templar (Advocate dwelling in the 
Temple), who gives me coffee and Sally-Lunns (a sort 
of buttered roll), and German books, and talk by the 
gallon in a minute. His windows look into Alsatia ! 
With the Montagus I, once a week or so, step in and 
chat away a friendly hour: they are good clever people, 
though their goodness and clcA^erness are strangely min- 
gled with absurdity in word and deed. They like me 
very well: I saw Badams there last night; I am to see 
him more at large to-morrow or soon after. Mrs. Strachey 
has twice been here to see me — in her carriage, a circum- 
stance of strange omen to our worthy [friend]. . . . 
Among the Poets I see Procter and Allan Cunningham 
as often as I like: the other night I had a second and 
much longer talk with Campbell. I went over with one 
Macbeth, not the "Usurper," but a hapless Preacher from 
Scotland, whose gifts, coupled with their drawbacks, can- 
not earn him bread in London, though Campbell and 
Irving and many more are doing all they can for him. 
Thomas is a clever man, and we had a much more 
pleasant conversation than our first: but I do not think 
my view of him was materially altered. He is vain and 
dry in heart; the brilliancy of his mind (which will not 
dazzle you to death after all) is like the glitter of an 
iceberg in the Greenland seas; parts of it are beautiful, 
but it is cold, cold, and you would rather look at it 
than touch it. I partly feel for Campbell: his early life 
was a tissue of wretchedness (here in London he has 
lived upon a pennyworth of milk and a penny roll per 
day) ; and at length his soul has got encrusted as with 



^t. 33] THOMAS CARLYLE 213 

a case of iron; and he has betaken himself to sneering 
and selfishness — a common issue! 

Irving I see as frequently and kindly as ever. His 
church and boy occupy him much. The madness of 
his popularity is altogether over; and he must content 
himself with playing a much lower game than he once 
anticipated; nevertheless I imagine he will do much good 
in London, where many men like him are greatly wanted. 
His wife and he are always good to me. 

Respecting my future movements I can predict nothing 
certain yet. It is not improbable, I think, that I may 
see you all in Scotland before many weeks are come and 
gone. Here at any rate, in my present circumstances, 
I do not mean to stay: it is expensive beyond measure 
(two guineas a week or thereby for the mere items of 
bed and board) ; and I must have a permanent abode of 
some kind devised for myself, if I mean to do any good. 
Within reach of Edinburgh or London, it matters little 
which. You have not yet determined upon leaving or 
retaining Mainhill? I think it is a pity that you had 
not some more kindly spot: at all events a better house 
I would have. Is Mainholm let? By clubbing our capi- 
tals together we might make something of it. A house 
in the country, and a horse to ride on, I must and will 
have if it be possible. Tell me all your views on these 
things when you write. 

. . . Good night! my dear Alick! — I am, ever your 
affectionate Brother, 

T. Carlyle. 

IMi. 33] 

To Thomas De Quixcey 
[life at craigexputtock] 
Craigenputtock, 11th December, 1828. 
My dear Sir, — 

Having the opportunity of a frank, I cannot resist the 
temptation to send you a few lines, were it only to signify 
that two well-wishers of yours are still alive in these 
remote moors, and often thinking of you with the old 
friendly feelings. My wife encourages me in this inno- 
cent purpose: she has learned lately that you were in- 



214 THOMAS CAELYLE [^t. 33 

quiring for her of some female friend; nay, even prom- 
ising to visit us here — a fact of the most interesting 
sort to both of us. I am to say, therefore, that your 
presence at this fireside will diffuse no ordinary gladness 
over all members of the household ; . that our warmest 
welcome, and such solacements as even the desert does 
not refuse, are at any time and at all times in store 
for one we love so well. Neither is this expedition so 
impracticable. We lie but a short way out of your direct 
route to Westmoreland; communicate by gravelled roads 
with Dumfries and other places in the habitable globe. 
Were you to warn us of your approach, it might all be 
made easy enough. And then such a treat it would be 
to hear the sound of philosophy and literature in the 
hitherto quite savage wolds, where since the creation of 
the world no such music, scarcely even articulate speech, 
had been uttered or dreamed of! Come, therefore, come 
and see us ; for we often long after you. Nay, I can prom- 
ise, too, that we are almost a unique sight in the British 
Empire; such a quantity of German periodicals and 
mystic speculation embosomed in plain Scottish Peat- 
moor being nowhere else that I know of to be met with. 

In idle hours we sometimes project founding a sort of 
colony here, to be called the "Misanthropic Society"; the 
settlers all to be men of a certain philosophic depth, and 
intensely sensible of the present state of literature; each 
to have his own cottage, encircled with roses or thistles 
as he might prefer ; a library and pantry within, and huge 
stack of turf-fuel without; fenced off from his neigh- 
bours by fir woods, and, when he pleased, by cast-metal 
railing, so that each might feel himself strictly an indi- 
vidual, and free as a son of the wilderness ; but the whole 
settlement to meet weekly over coffee, and there unite in 
their Miserere, or what were better, hurl forth their de- 
fiance, pity, expostulation, over the whole universe, civil, 
literary, and religious. I reckon this place a much fitter 
site for such an establishment than your Lake Country 
—a region abounding in natural beauty, but blown on by 
coach-horns, betrodden by picturesque tourists, and other- 
wise exceedingly desecrated by too frequent resort; 
whereas here, though still in communication with the 
manufacturing world, we have a solitude altogether Dru- 



.Et. 33] THOMAS CAKLYLE 215 

idical — grim hills tenanted chiefly by the wild grouse, 
tarns and brooks that have soaked and slumbered unmo- 
lested since the Deluge of Noah, and nothing to disturb 
you with speech, except Arcturus and Orion, and the 
Spirit of Nature, in the heaven and in the earth, as it 
manifests itself in anger or love, and utters its inexplica- 
ble tidings, unheard by the mortal ear. But the misery 
is the almost total want of colonists! Would you come 
hither and be king over us; ^/(e/i indeed we had made a 
fair beginning, and the "Bog School" might snap its 
fingers at the "Lake School" itself, and hope to be one 
day recognised of all men. 

But enough of this fooling. Better were it to tell you 
in plain prose what little can be said of my own welfare, 
and inquire in the same dialect after yours. It will 
gratify you to learn that here, in the desert, as in the 
crowded city, I am moderately active and well; better in 
health, not worse; and though active only on the small 
scale, yet in my own opinion honestly, and to as much 
result as has been usual with me at any time. We have 
horses to ride on, gardens to cultivate, tight walls and 
strong fires to defend us against winter; books to read, 
paper to scribble on; and no man or thing, at least in 
this visible earth, to make us afraid; for I reckon that 
so securely sequestered are we, not only would no Catholic 
rebellion, but even no new Hengist and Horsa invasion, 
in anywise disturb our tranquillity. True, we have no 
society; but who has, in the strict sense of that word? I 
have never had any worth speaking much about since I 
came into this world: in the next, it may be, they will 
order matters better. Meanwhile, if we have not the 
wheat in great quantity, we are nearly altogether free 
from the chajf, which often in this matter is highly an- 
noying to weak nerves. My wife and I are busy learning 
Spanish; far advanced in Don Quixote already. I pur- 
pose writing mystical Reviews for somewhat more than 
a twelvemonth to come; have Greek to read, and the 
whole universe to study (for I understand less and less 
of it) ; so that here as well as elsewhere I find that a man 
may "dree his luierd" (serve out his earthly apprentice- 
ship) with reasonable composure, and wait what the 
flight of years may bring him, little disappointed (unless 



216 THOMAS CARLYLE [.^t. 33 

he is a fool) if it brings him mere nothing save what he 
has already — a body and a soul — more cunning and costly 
treasures than all Golconda and Potosi could purchase 
for him. What would the vain worm, man, be at? Has 
he not a head, to speak of nothing else — a head ^(be it 
with a hat or without one) full of far richer thing's 'than 
Windsor Palace, or the Brighton Teapot added to it? 
What are all Dresden picture-galleries and magazines 
des arts et des metiers to the strange painting and thrice 
wonderful and thrice precious workmanship that goes on 
under the cranium of a beggar? What can be added to 
him or taken from him by the hatred or love of all men ? 
The grey paper or the white silk paper in which the gold 
ingot is wrapped; the gold is inalienable; he is the gold. 
But truce also to this moralising. I had a thousand 
things to ask concerning you: your employments, pur- 
poses, sufferings and pleasures. Will you not write to me ? 
will you not come to me and tell? Believe it, you are 
well loved here, and none feels better than I what a spirit 
is for the present eclipsed in clouds. For the present it 
can only be; time and chance are for all men; that 
troublous season will end; and one day with more joy- 
ful, not deeper or truer regard, I shall see you "yourself 
again." Meanwhile, pardon me this intrusion; and write, 
if you have a vacant hour which you would fill with a 
good action. Mr. Jeffery [sic] is still anxious to know 
you ; has he ever succeeded ? We are not to be in Edin- 
burgh, I believe, till spring; but I will send him a letter 
to you (with your permission) by the first conveyance. 
Remember me with best regards to Professor Wilson and 
Sir W. Hamilton, neither of whom must forget me; not 
omitting the honest Gordon, who I know will not. 

The bearer of this letter is Henry Inglis, a young gen- 
tleman of no ordinary talent and worth, in whom, as I 
believe, es stecM gar viel. Should he call himself, pray 
let this be an introduction, for he reverences all spiritual 
worth, and you also will -learn to love him. — ^With all 
friendly sentiments, I am ever, my dear sir, most faith- 
fully yours, 

T. Carlyle. 



^t. 38] THOMAS CAELYLE 217 

[.Et. 38] 

To Dr. Carlyle 
[settling down at Chelsea] 

Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, 
17th June, 1834. 
J/i/ dear Brother, — 

. . . You can fancy what weary lonesome wander- 
ings,! had, through the dusty suburbs, and along the 
burning streets, under a fierce May' sun with East wind; 
''seeking' through the nation for some habitation!" At 
length Jane sent me comfortable tidings of innumerable 
difficulties overcome; and finally (in, I think, the fourth 
week) arrived herself; with the Furniture all close fol- 
lowing her, in one of Pickford's Track-boats. I carried 
her to certain of the hopefuUest-looking Houses I had 
fallen in with, and a toilsome time we anew had: how- 
ever, it was not long; for, on the second inspection, this 
old Chelsea mansion pleased very decidedly far better 
than any other we could see; and, the people also whom 
it belongs to proving reasonable, we soon struck a bar- 
gain, and in three days more (precisely this day week) a 
Hackney Coach, loaded to the roof and beyond it with 
luggage and live-passengers, tumbled us all down here 
about eleven in the morning. By "all" I mean my Dame 
and myself; Bessy Barnet, who had come the night be- 
fore; and — little Chico, the Canary-bird, who, multum 
jactatiis, did nevertheless arrive living and well from 
Puttock, and even sang violently all the way by sea or 
land, nay struck up his lilt in the very London streets 
wherever he could see green leaves and feel the free air. 
There then we sat on three trunks; I, however, with a 
match-box, soon lit a cigar, as Bessy did a fire; and thus 
with a kind of cheerful solemnity we took possession by 
''raising reek," and even dined in an extempore fashion, 
on a box-lid covered with some accidental towel. At two 
o'clock the Pickfords did arrive; and then began the 
hurly-burly; which even yet has but grown quieter, will 
not grow quiet, for a fortnight to come. However, two 
rooms and two bedrooms are now in a partially civilised 
state; the broken Furniture is mostly mended; I have my 



218 THOMAS CAKLYLE [JEt. 38 

old writing-table again (here) firrn as Atlas; a large 
wainscoted drawing-room (which is to be my study) with 
the "red carpet" tightly spread on it; my Books all safe 
in Presses; the Belisarius Picture right in front of me 
over the mantel-piece (most suitable to its new wainscot 
lodging), and my beloved Segretario Amhulante right be- 
hind, with the two old Italian Engravings, and others 
that I value less, dispersed around; and so, opposite the 
middle of my three windows, with little but huge Scotch 
elm-trees looking in on me, and in the distance an ivied 
House, and a sunshiny sky bursting out from genial rain, 
I sit here already very much at home, and impart to my 
dear and true Brother a thankfulness which he is sure 
to share in. We have indeed much reason to be thank- 
ful every way. 

With the House we are all highly pleased, and, I think, 
the better, the longer we know it hitherto. I know not 
if you ever were at Chelsea, especially at Old Chelsea, of 
which this is portion. It stretches from Battersea Bridge 
(a queer old wooden structure, where they charge you a 
halfpenny) along the bank of the River, westward a little 
way; and eastward (which is our side) some quarter of a 
mile, forming a "Cheyne Walk" (pronounced Chainie 
walk) of really grand old brick mansions, dating perhaps 
from Charles II.'s time ("Don Saltero's Coffeehouse" of 
the Tatler is still fresh and brisk among them), with 
flagged pavement; carriage-way between two rows of 
stubborn-looking high old pollarded trees; and then the 
river with its varied small craft, fast-moving or safe- 
moored, and the wholesome smell (among the breezes) of 
sea tar. Cheyne Row (or Great Cheyne Row, when we 
wish to be grand) runs up at right angles from this, has 
some twenty Houses of the same fashion; Upper Cheyne 
Row (where Hunt lives) turning again at right angles, 
some stone-cast from this door. Frontwards we have 
the outlook I have described already (or if we shove out 
our head, the River is disclosed some hundred paces to 
the left) ; backwards, from the ground floor, our own 
gardenkin (which I with new garden-tools am actually 
re-trimming every morning), and, from all the other 
floors, nothing but leafy clumps, and green fields, and 



Mt. 38] THOMAS CAKLYLE 219 

red high-peaked roofs glimmering through them: a most 
clear, pleasant prospect, in these fresh westerly airs! Of 
London nothing visible but Westminster Abbey and the 
topmost dome of St. Paul's; other faint ghosts of spires 
(one other at least) disclose themselves, as the smoke- 
cloud shifts; but I have not yet made out what they are. 
At night we are pure and silent, almost as at Puttock; 
and the gas-light shimmer of the great Babylon hangs 
stretched from side to side of our horizon. To Bucking- 
ham Gate it is thirty-two minutes of my walking (Allan 
Cunningham's door about half way) ; nearly the very 
same to Hyde-Park Corner, to which latter point we have 
omnibuses every quarter of an hour (they say) that carry 
you to the Whitehorse Cellar, or even to Coventry Street, 
for sixpence; calling for you at the very threshold. 
Nothing was ever so discrepant in my experience as the 
Craigenputtock-silence of this House and then the world- 
hubhub of London and its people into which a few min- 
utes bring you: I feel as if a day spent between the two 
must be the epitome of a month. . . . The rent is £35; 
which really seems £10 cheaper than such a House could 
be had for in Dumfries or Annan. The secret is our old 
friend, "Gigmanity" : Chelsea is unfashionable; it is also 
reputed unhealthy. The former quality we rather like 
(for our neighbours still are all polite-living people) ; the 
latter we do not in the faintest degree believe in, remem- 
bering that Chelsea was once considered the "London 
Montpelier," and knowing that in these matters now as 
formerly the Cockneys "know nothing," only rush in 
masses blindly and sheep-wise. Our worst fault is the 
want of a good free rustic walk, like Kensington Gar- 
dens, which are above a mile off: however, we have the 
"College" or Hospital grounds, with their withered old 
Pensioners; we have open carriage-ways, and lanes, and 
really a very pretty route to Piccadilly (different from 
the omnibus route) through the new Grosvenor edifices, 
Eaton Square, Belgrave Place, etc. : I have also walked 
to Westminster Hall by Vauxhall Bridge-end, Millbank, 
etc.; but the road is squalid, confused, dusty, and de- 
testable, and happily need not be returned to. To con- 
clude, we are here on literary classical ground, as Hunt 



220 THOMAS CAELYLE - [.Et. 38 

is continually ready to declare and unfold: not a stone- 
cast from this House Smollett wrote his Count Fathom 
(the house is ruined and we happily do not see it) ; hardly 
another stone-cast off, old More entertained Erasmus: to 
say nothing of Bolingbroke St. John, of Paradise Row, 
and the Count de Grammont, for in truth w^e care almost 
nothing for them. On the whole w^e are exceedingly con- 
tent so far; and have reason to be so. I add only that 
our furniture came with wonderfully little breakage, and 
for less than £20, Annan included; that Jane sold all her 
odd things to Nanny Macqueen on really fair terms; 
and that we find new furniture of all sorts exceedingly 
cheap here, and have already got what we need, or nearly 
so, for less than our own old good, brought us on the 
spot. . . . 

There is now a word to be said on Economics, and the 
Commissariat Department. Bookselling is still at its 
lowest ebb; yet on the whole better than I expected to 
find it. Eraser is the only craftsman I have yet seen: 
he talks still of loss by his Magazine and I think will not 
willingly employ me much, were I never so ready, at the 
old rate of writing. He seems a well-intentioned crea- 
ture; I can really pity him in the place he occupies. I 
went yesterday with a project of a series of Articles on 
Erench Revolution matters; chiefly to be translated from 
Memoires: but he could not take them, at any rate, or 
indeed at almost any rate; for he spoke of £10 a sheet 
as quite a ransom. He has got my name (such as it is), 
and can do better without me. However, he will cheer- 
fully print (for "half -profits," that is, zero) a projected 
Book of mine on the Erench Revolution; to which ac- 
cordingly, if no new thing occur, I shall probably very 
soon with all my heart address myself, in full purpose 
to do my best, and put my name to it. The Diamond 
NecJdace Paper his Boy got from me, by appointment, 
this morning; to be examined whether it will make a 
Book : as an Article I shall perhaps hardly think of giv- 
ing it to him. Eor, you are to understand, that Radical 
Review of Mill's, after seeming to be quite abandoned, 
has now a far fairer chance of getting started: a Sir W. 
Molesworth, a young man whom I have seen at Buller's 



^t. 39] THOMAS CAKLYLE 221 

and liked, offers to furnish all the money himself (and 
can do it, being very rich), and to take no further hand 
in it, once a Manager that will please Mill is found for 
it. Mill is to be here to-morrow evening: I think, I must 
appoint some meeting with Molesworth, and give him my 
whole views of it, and express my readiness to take a 
most hearty hold of it ; having the prospect of right com- 
panions; none yet but Mill and Buller, and such as we 
may further approve of and add. It seems likely something 
may come of this. In any other case, Periodical Author- 
ship, like all other forms of it, seems done in the econom- 
ical sense : I think of quite abandoning it ; of writing my 
Book ; and then, with such name as it may give me, start- 
ing some new course, or courses, to make honest wages 
by. A poor Fanny Wright (whom we are to hear to- 
night in Freemason's Hall) goes lecturing over the whole 
world: before sight, I will engage to lecture twice as 
well; being, as Glen once said, with great violence, to 
me, "the more gigantic spirit of the two." On the whole, 
I fear nothing. There are funds here already to keep us 
going above a year, independently of all incomings: be- 
fore that we may have seen into much, tried much, and 
succeeded in somewhat. "God's providence they cannot 
hinder thee of" : that is the thing I always repeat to my- 
self, or know without repeating. ... 

God bless you, dear Brother! Vale mei memor. 

T. Carlyle. 

[.Ft. 39] 

To Dr. Carlyle 
[the burxixg of the "frexch revolutiox" MS.] 

Cheyxe Row, Chelsea, Loxdox, 
23d March, 1835. 
My dear Brother, — 

Your Letter came in this morning (after sixteen days 
from Rome) ; and, to-morrow being post-day, I have 
shoved my writing-table into the corner, and sit (with 
my back to the fire and Jane, who is busy sewing at my 
old jupe of a Dressing-gown), forthwith making answer. 
It was somewhat longed for; yet I felt, in other respects. 



222 THOMAS CAKLYLE [.Et. 39 

that it was better you had not written sooner; for I had 
a thing to dilate upon, of a most ravelled character, that 
was better to be knit up a little first. You shall hear. 
But do not be alarmed; for it is "neither death nor men's 
lives": we are all well, and I heard out of Annandale 
within these three weeks, nay, Jane's Newspaper came 
with the customary "two strokes," ^ only five days ago. 
I meant to write to our Mother last night; but shall now 
do it to-morrow. 

Mill had borrowed that first Volume of my poor French 
Revolution (pieces of it more than once) that he might 
have it all before him, and write down some observations 
on it, which perhaps I might print as Notes. I was busy 
meanwhile with Volume Second; toiling along like a 
Nigger, but with the heart of a free Roman: indeed, I 
know not how it was, I had not felt so clear and inde- 
pendent, sure of myself and of my task for many long 
years. Well, one night about three weeks ago, we sat at 
tea, and Mill's short rap was heard at the door : Jane rose 
to welcome him; but he stood there unresponsive, pale, 
the very picture of despair; said, half-articulately gasp- 
ing, that she must go down and speak to "Mrs. Taylor." 
. . . After some considerable additional gasping, I 
learned from Mill this fact: that my poor Manuscript, 
all except some four tattered leaves, was annihilated! He 
had left it out (too carelessly) ; it had been taken for 
waste-paper: and so five months of as tough labour as I 
could remember of, were as good as vanished, gone like 
a whiff of smoke. — There never in my life had come upon 
me any other accident of much moment ; but this I could 
not but feel to be a sore one. The thing was lost, and 
perhaps worse ; for I had not only forgotten all the struc- 
ture of it, but the spirit it was written with was past; 
only the general impression seemed to remain, and the 
recollection that I was on the whole well satisfied with 
that, and could now hardly hope to equal it. Mill, whom 
I had to comfort and speak peace to, remained inju- 
diciously enough till almost midnight, and my poor Dame 
and I had to sit talking of indifferent matters; and could 

* A manner of indicating that "all was well." 



^t. 39] THOMAS CAKLYLE 223 

not till then get our lament freely uttered. She was very 
good to me; and the thing did not beat us. I felt in 
general that I was as a little Schoolboy, who had labori- 
ously written out his Copy as he could, and was showing 
it not without satisfaction to the Master : but lo ! the Mas- 
ter had suddenly torn it, saying: "No, boy, thou must go 
and write it letter.". What could I do but sorrowing go 
and try to obey. That night was a hard one; something 
from time to time tying me tight as it were all round the 
region of the heart, and strange dreams haunting me: 
however, I was not without good thoughts too that came 
like healing life into me; and I got it somewhat reason- 
ably crushed down, not abolished, yet subjected to me 
with the resolution and prophecy of abolishing. Next 
morning accordingly I wrote to Fraser (who had adver- 
tised the Book as "preparing for publication^') that it was 
all gone back; that he must not speak of it to any one 
(till it was made good again) ; finally that he must send 
me some better paper, and also a Biograpkie JJniverselle, 
for I was determined to risk ten pounds more upon it. 
Poor Fraser was very assiduous: I got Bookshelves put 
up (for the whole House was flowing with Books), where 
the Biographie (not Fraser's, however, which was coun- 
termanded, but Mill's), with much else stands all ready, 
much readier than before: and so, having first finished 
out the Piece I was actually upon, I began again at the 
beginning. Early the day after to-morrow (after a hard 
and quite novel kind of battle) I count on having the 
First Chapter on paper a second time, no worse than it 
was, though considerably different. The bitterness of the 
business is past therefore; and you must conceive me 
toiling along in that new way for many weeks to come. 
As for Mill I must yet tell you the best side of him. Next 
day after the accident he writes me a passionate Letter 
requesting with boundless earnestness to be allowed to 
make the loss good as far as money was concerned in it. 
I answered: Yes, since he so desired it; for in our 'circum- 
stances it was not unreasonable: in about a week he ac- 
cordingly transmits me a draft for £200 ; I had computed 
that my five months' housekeeping, etc., had cost me £100; 
which sum therefore and not two hundred was the one, 



224 THOMAS CAKLYLE [^t. 39 

I told him, I could take. He has been here since then; 
but has not sent the £100, though I suppose he will soon 
do it, and so the thing will end, — more handsomely than 
one could have expected. I ought to draw from it vari- 
ous practical "uses of improvement" (among others not 
to lend manuscripts again) ; and above all things try to 
do the work better than it was; in which case I shall 
never grudge the labour, but reckon it a goodhap. — It 
really seemed to me a Book of considerable significance; 
and not unlikely even to be of some interest at present: 
but that latter, and indeed all economical and other the 
like considerations had become profoundly indifferent to 
me; I felt that I was honestly writing down and delineat- 
ing a World-Fact (which the Almighty had brought to 
pass in the world) ; that it was an honest work for me, 
and all men might do and say of it simply what seemed 
good to them. — Nay I have got back my spirits again 
(after this first Chapter), and hope I shall go on tolerably. 
I will struggle assiduously to be done with it by the time 
you are to be looked for (which meeting may God bring 
happily to pass) ; and in that case I will cheerfully throw 
the business down a while, and walk off with you to Scot- 
land; hoping to be ready for the next publishing season. 
— This is my ravelled concern, dear Jack; which you see 
is in the way to knit itself up again, before I am called 
to tell you of it. And now for something else. I was for 
writing to you of it next day after it happened : but Jane 
suggested, it would only grieve you, till I could say it 
was in the way towards adjustment; which counsel I saw 
to be right. Let us hope assuredly that the whole will 
be for good. . . . 

Our visitors and visitings are what I cannot give you 
account of this time: not that they are many; but 
that the sheet is so near full. One Taylor (Henry Tay- 
lor, who 'has written a Philip van Artevelde, a good man, 
whose laugh reminds me of poor Irving's) invited me to 
meet Southey some weeks ago. I went and met Southey. 
A man of clear brown complexion, large nose, no chin, 
or next to none; care-lined and thought-lined brow, 
vehement hazel eyes ; huge mass of white hair surmount- 
ing it; a strait-laced, limited, well-instructed, well-condi- 



^t. 39] THOMAS CAKLYLE 225 

tioned, excessively sensitive even irritable-looking man. 
His irritability I think is his grand spiritual feature; as 
his grand bodily is perhaps leanness and long legs: a 
nervous female might shriek when he rises for the first 
time, and stretches to such unexpected length — like a lean 
pair of tongs! We parted good friends; and may meet 
again, or not meet, as Destiny orders. At the same house, 
since that, Jane and I went to meet Wordsworth. I did 
not expect much; but got mostly what I expected. The 
old man has a fine shrewdness and naturalness in his ex- 
pression of face (a long Cumberland figure) ; one finds 
also a kind of sincerity in his speech: but for prolixity, 
thinness, endless dilution it excels all the other speech I 
had heard from mortal. A genuine man (which is much), 
but also essentially a small genuine man: nothing per- 
haps is sadder (of the glad kind) than the unbounded 
laudation of such a man; sad proof of the rarity of such. 
I fancy, however, he has fallen into the garrulity of age, 
and is not what he was: also that his environment (and 
rural Prophethood) has hurt him much. He seems im- 
patient that even Shakespeare should be admired: "so 
much out of my own pocket!" The shake of hand he 
gives you is feckless, egoistical; I rather fancy he loves 
nothing in the world so much as one could wish. When 
I compare that man with a great man, — alas, he is like 
dwindling into a contemptibility ; Jean Paul (for exam- 
ple), neither was he great, could have worn him as a 
finger-ring. However, when "I go to Cumberland," 
Wordsworth will still be a glad sight. — I have not been 
fortunate in my Pen to-night; indeed for the last page I 
have been writing with the back of it. This and my speed 
will account for the confusion. Porridge has just come 
in. I will to bed without writing more; and finish to- 
morrow. Good night, dear Brother! — Ever yours! . . . 



226 THOMAS CARLYLE [^t. 41 

[JEt. 41] 

To John Carlyle 
[lecturing; a postscript by jane welsh carlyle] 

Chelsea, Mslj 30, 1837. 

As to the lectures the thing went off not without effect, 
and I have great cause to be thankful I am so handsomely 
quit of it. The audience, composed of mere quality and 
notabilities, was very humane to me. They seemed in- 
deed to be not a little astonished at the wild Annandale 
voice which occasionally grew high and earnest. In these 
cases they sate as still under me as stones. I had, I think, 
two hundred and odd. The pecuniary net result is 135 1., 
the expenses being great; but the ulterior issues may be 
less inconsiderable. It seems possible I may get into a 
kind of way of lecturing, or otherwise speaking direct to 
my fellow-creatures, and so get delivered out of this aw- 
ful quagmire of difficulties in which you have so long 
seen me struggle and wriggle. Heaven be thanked that 
it is done this time so tolerably, and we here still alive. 
I hardly ever in my life had such a moment as that of 
the commencement when you were thinking of me at 
Eome. My printers had only ceased the day before. I 
was wasted and fretted to a thread. My tongue, let me 
drink as I would, continued dry as charcoal. The people 
were there; I was obliged to tumble in and start. Ach 
Gott! But it was got through, and so here we are. Our 
mother was 'blach-haised, though I had written to her to 
be only luhite-haised. But she read the notice in the 
"Times," and "wept," she tells me, and again read it. 
Jane went to the last four lectures and did not faint. 

And now I am delving in the garden to compose my- 
self, and meaning to have things leisurely settled up here, 
and then start for Scotland. I should much approve of 
your scheme of our going all in a body. Indeed I have 
tried it every way, but it will not do. Quiet observation 
forces on me the conclusion that Jane and her mother 
cannot live together. Very sad and miserable, you will 
say. Truly, but so it is; and I am further bound to say 
that the chief blame does verily not lie at our side of the 
house. ]^ay, who would be in haste to lay any blame 
anywhere? But poor Mrs. Welsh, with literally the best 



.^t. 41] THOMAS CAELYLE 227 

intentions, is a person you cannot live with peaceably on 
any other terms I could ever discover than those of dis- 
regarding altogether the whims, emotions, caprices, and 
conclusions she takes up chameleonlike by the thousand 
daily. She and I do very well together on these terms: 
at least I do. But Jane and she cannot live so. Mrs. 
Welsh .seems to think of going off home in a short time. 
Jane prefers being left here, and thinks that she could 
even do better without the perpetual pouting and fretting 
she is tried with. 

My own health is not fundamentally hurt. Eest will 
cure me. I must be a toughish kind of a lath after all; 
for my life here these three years has been sore and stern, 
almost frightful ; nothing but eternity beyond it, in which 
seemed any peace. Perhaps better days are now begin- 
ning. God be thanked we can still do without such; still 
and always if so it be. . . .1 grow better daily; I delve, 
as you heard; I w^alk much, generally alone through the 
lanes and parks ; I have lived much alone for a long time, 
refusing to go anywhere; finding no pleasure in going 
anywhere or speaking with anyone. 

[By Mrs. Carlyle] 

P.S. I do not find that my husband has given you 
any adequate notion of the success of his lectures; but 
you will make large allowance for the known modesty of 
the man. Nothing that he has ever tried seems to me 
to have carried such conviction to the public heart that 
he is a real man of genius, and worth being kept alive 
at a moderate rate. Lecturing were surely an easier pro- 
fession than authorship. We shall see. My cough is 
quite gone, and there is no consumption about me at 
present. I expect to grow strong, now that he has noth- 
ing more to worry him. 



228 THOMAS CAKLYLE [.Et. 42. 

[^t. 42] 

To Emerson* 

[weariness; sterling; emerson's "clear high melody"] 

Chelsea^ London^ 8 December, 1837. 
My dear Emerson, — 

How long it is since you last heard of me I do not 
very accurately know; but it is too long. A very long, 
ugly, inert, and unproductive chapter of my own his- 
tory seems to have passed since then. Whenever I delay 
writing, be sure matters go not well with me; and do you 
in that case write to me, were it again and over again — 
unweariable in pity. 

I did go to Scotland, for almost three months; leaving 
my Wife here with her Mother. The poor Wife had fallen 
so weak that she gave me real terror in the spring-time, 
and made the Doctor look very grave indeed: she contin- 
ued too weak for travelling: I was worn out as I had 
never in my life been. So, on the longest day of June, 
I got back to my Mother's cottage; threw myself down, 
I may say, into what we may call the "frightfulest mag- 
netic sleep," and lay there avoiding the intercourse of 
men. Most wearisome had their gabble become; almost 
unearthly. But indeed all was unearthly in that humour. 
The gushing of my native brooks, the sough of the old 
solitary woods, the great roar of old native Solway (bil- 
lowing fresh out of your Atlantic, drawn by the Moon) : 
all this was a kind of unearthly music to me; I cannot 
tell you how unearthly. It did not bring me to rest; 
yet towards rest I do think: at all events, the time had 
come when I behoved to quit it again. I have been here 
since September: evidently another little "chapter" or 
paragraph, not altogether inert, is getting forward. But 
I must not speak of these things. How can I speak of 
them on a miserable scrap of blue paper? Looking into 
your kind eyes with my eyes, I could speak: not here. 
Pity me, my friend, my brother; yet hope well of me: 
if I can (in all senses) rightly hold my peace, I think 
much will yet be well with me. SILENCE is the great 

* For Emerson's reply, see p. 261. 



^t. 42] THOMAS CAELYLE 229 

thing I worship at present; almost the sole tenant of my 
Pantheon. Let a man know rightly how to hold his peace. 
I love to repeat to myself, "Silence is of Eternity." Ah 
me, I think how I could rejoice to quit these jarring dis- 
cords and jargonings of Babel, and go far, far away! 
I do believe, if I had the smallest competence of money 
to get "food and warmth" with, I would shake the mud 
of London from my feet, and gb and bury myself in some 
green place, and never print any syllable more. Perhaps 
it is better as it is. 

But quitting this, we will actually speak (under favor 
of "Silence") one very small thing; a pleasant piece of 
news. There is a man here called John Sterling (Rev- 
erend John of the Church of England too), whom I love 
better than anybody I have met with, since a certain 
sky-messenger alighted to me at Craigenputtock, and 
vanished in the Blue again. This Sterling has written; 
but what is far better, he has lived, he is alive. Across 
several unsuitable wrappages, of Church-of-Englandism 
and others, my heart loves the man. He is one, and the 
best, of a small class extant here, who, nigh drowning 
in a bla«k wreck of Infidelity (lighted up by some glare 
of Radicalism only, now growing dim too) and about to 
perish, saved themselves into a Coleridgian Shovel-hat- 
tedness, or determination to preach,, to preach peace, were 
it only the spent echo of a peace once preached. He is 
still only about thirty; young; and I think will shed the 
shovel-hat yet perhaps. Do you ever read Blachwood? 
This John Sterling is the "New Contributor" whom Wil- 
son makes such a rout about, in the November and prior 
month: "Crystals from a Cavern," &c., which it is well 
worth your while to see. Well, and what then, cry you? 
— Why then, this John Sterling has fallen overhead in 
love with a certain Waldo Emerson; that is all. He 
saw the little Book Nature lying here; and, across a 
whole silva silvarum of prejudices, discerned what was 
in it; took it to his heart, — and indeed into his pocket; 
and has carried it off to Madeira with him; whither 
imhappily (though now with good hope and expectation) 
the Doctors have ordered him. This is the small piece 
of pleasant news, that two sky-messengers (such they 
were both of them to me) have met and recognized each 



230 THOMAS CAKLYLE [^t. 42 

other; and by God's blessing there shall one day be a 
trio of us: call you that nothing? 

And so now by a direct transition I am got to the 
Oration. My friend! you know not what you have done 
for me there. It was long decades of years that I had 
heard nothing but the infinite jangling and jabbering, 
and inarticulate twittering and screeching, and my soul 
had sunk down sorrowfull, and said there is no articu- 
late speaking then any more, and thou art solitary among 
stranger-creatures, and lo, out of the West comes a 
clear utterance, clearly recognizable as a rrhan's voice, 
and I liave a kinsman and brother: God be thanked for 
it ! I could have wept to read that speech ; the clear high 
melody of it went tingling through my heart; I said to 
my wife, "There, woman!" She read; and returned, and 
charges me to return for answer, "that there had been 
nothing met with like it since Schiller went silent." My 
brave Emerson! And all this has been lying silent, 
quite tranquil in him,^ these seven years, and the "vocif- 
erous platitude" dinning his ears on all sides, and he 
quietly answering no word ; and a whole world of Thought 
has silently built itself in these calm depths, and, the day 
being come, says quite softly, as if it were a common 
thing, "Yes, I am here too." Miss Martineau tells me, 
"Some say it is inspired, some say it is mad." Exactly 
so; no say could be suitabler. But for you, my dear 
friend, I say and pray heartily: May God grant you 
strength; for you have a fearful work to do! Eearful 
I call it; and yet it is great, and the greatest. O for 
God's sake Tceep yourself still quiet! Do not hasten 
to write; you cannot be too slow about it. Give no ear 
to any man's praise or censure; know that that is not it: 
on the one side is as Heaven if you have strength to 
keep silent, and climb unseen; yet on the other side, 
yawning always at one's right-hand and one's left, is the 
frightfulest Abyss and Pandemonium! See Eenimore 
Cooper; — poor Cooper, he is down in it; and had a 
climbing faculty too. Be steady, be quiet, be in no 
haste; and God speed you well! My space is done. 

And so adieu, for this time. You must write soon 
again. My copy of the Oration has never come: how 
is this? I could dispose of a dozen well. — They say I 



^t. 45] THOMAS CAELYLE 



231 



am to lecture again in Spring, Ay de mi! The '^ook" 
is babbled about sufficiently in several dialects. Fraser 
wants to print my scattered Reviews and Articles; a 
pregnant sign. Teufelsdrockh to precede. The man 
''screamed" once at the name of it in a very musical 
manner. He shall not print a line; unless he gives me 
money for it, more or less. I have had enough of print- 
mg for one while,— thrown into ''magnetic sleep" by it! 
Farewell my brother. 

T. Carlyle. 
[^t. 45] 

To Henry W. Longfellow 
["the infinite hubbub of cockney thoughts"] 

^^ Chelsea, London, December, 1840. 

My dear Sir, — 

About two weeks ago arrived your letter. . . . From 
you, since the morning when we parted at the end of 
Leigh Hunt's Eow, some fitful reports and notices have 
reached me; one in particular which, I remember, fright- 
ened us all,— the rumour that you were in that fatal 
steamer where so many perished! Happily, this was soon 
contradicted; and about the same time there came an 
mdistinct message that a copy of your Poems had been 
left for me at Fraser, the bookseller's. It now beckons 
to_ me from one of my shelves, asking always, When 
wilt thou have a cheerful vacant day? . . 

Alas, my dear sir, what a wretched scrawl is this, with 
the worst of pens; time, composure, and all elements of 
social intercourse entirely denied me! It is a hideous, 
immeasurable treadmill, this smoky soul-confusing Baby- 
lon; I address one prayer to the heavens that I were 
well out of it, before it take the life from me! Happy 
you who sit in Cambridge, Old or New, with clear air 
around you, with liberty to commune with your own 
thoughts, not compulsion to commune with the infinite 
hubbub of Cockney thoughts and no-thoughts, which— 
mag der Teufel holen! But, patience! we must have 
patience, and shuffle the cards. 

Adieu, dear sir, and Good be with you ever. 

Yours most truly, 

T. Carlyle. 



rJJt21] JANE WELSH CARLYLE 4 

"- ■ 1801-1866 • 

To Thomas Caelyle 

["YOUR FRIENDSHIP RESTORED ME TO M^SEM"] 

Haddington, 11th November, 1822. 

^tl/lZtZd in distinguishing myself above the 
If ever 1 succeea m s ^^^ ^^^^^^ 

rr^sueress Eep atedly have your salutary, counsels 
:LTttl~:timel flatteries ro„.d -/rom inaet.v^y 

FnrSi^ns-teJitd SnaTse:;:tio^^ 
BtzJ^^tJi:^ ^^, ^0 ^s»a 

understood me; the pole-star of my life was lost, and 
"he world locked a dreary blank. Without plan hope or 
a^^, Thad lived two years when rny good Angel sent yox, 
hither I had never heard the language of talent and 
g nius. but from my Father's lips; I had though tha 
T should never hear it more. You spoke like him, your 
eloaurnce awoke in my soul the slumbering admirations 
md ambitions that His first kindled there. I wept to 
hkik "he mind he had eultivated with such anxious 
unremitting pains, was running to deflation ; and I 
returned with renewed strength and ardour to the life 
hit he had destined me to lead. But m W ^t"f-s I 
have neither the same pleasures, nor the «ajne motives 
as formerly. I am alone, and no one loves me better 
for mT industry. This solitude together with distrust 
of my own talents despair of ennobling my eharacter 
and the diseouragement I meet with m devoting myself 
to a literary life, would, I believe, have oftener than once 
thrown me into a state of helpless despondency had not 
your friendship restored me to myself by supplying (m 



Her father. 

232 



JEt. 22] JANE WELSH CAELYLE 233 

as much as they can ever be supplied) the counsels and 
incitements I have lost. — You see I am not insensible 
to the value of your friendship, or likely to throw it 
away, tho' you have sometimes charged me with incon- 
stancy and caprice. 

[.Et. 22] 

To Thomas Carlyle 
[reconciliation ; avoiding callers] 

Haddington, Sunday, 14 March, 1824. 
Dearest, — 

I looked for your Letter on Monday, as my reward for 
a week's diligence, and I was not disappointed. It is very 
good of you to write me such charming long Letters 
when you are over head and ears in business. Indeed 
I can never wonder enough at your kindness to me in 
all things; it is really very affecting! God grant that 
some day or other, I may deserve it ! This hope is the 
only thing that keeps me from quarrelling with myself 
outright, when I think of all my demerits in the time 
past. I declare I am very much of Mr. Kemp's way of 
thinking, that "certain persons are possessed of Devils 
even in the present time!" Nothing less than a Devil 
(I am sure) could have tempted me to torment you and 
myself, as I did on that unblessed day. Woe to me then, 
if I had had any other than the most constant and gener- 
ous of mortal men to deal with. Blessings on your 
equanimity and magnanimity! You are a dear good 
patient Genius. You are sure you forgive me? forgive 
me in the very core of your heart? I would rather pay 
you another dozen of shillings than that you should bear 
me the smallest grudge. 

For the first time these great many months I am not 
ashamed to tell you how I have been living. For two 
ivliole weel's I have rigidly adhered to my new system. 
It will answer well I find. By the help of the Lord I 
have been upon my feet every morning by half after 
seven, and throughout the day I have not suffered any- 
thing or anybody to interfere with my tasks. Indeed it 
will be all my own fault if I relapse into idleness in 
my present circumstances: for there are very few ob- 



234 JANE WELSH CARLYLE [.^t. 22 

stacks and no temptations at all, in the way of my 
industry. . . . 

To avoid those who are still in the practice of break- 
ing in upon us before one o'clock, I have excogitated an 
expedient for which I think I deserve some credit. While 
my Mother was colded we got into a way of breakfasting 
in her dressingroom, and finding that this arrangement, 
by which two pairs of stairs and a great many wooden 
doors are interposed between me and my enemies, con- 
tributed very considerably to my security, I managed to 
have it continued after my Mother got well again. I 
was still liable, however, to be sent for to the diningroom, 
and must then either have complied or have irritated my 
Mother by a point blank refusal. The way I have fallen 
upon to avoid this inconvenience, is the simplest that 
can well be imagined; and nevertheless it has hitherto 
proved effectual. When I get up in the morning I 
merely dash the sleep out of my eyes with cold water, 
comb up my hair, and whip on my dressinggown, taking 
care never to dress myself till after one o'clock. As my 
Mother discovers no deeper motive in- this proceeding 
than laziness or perhaps economy, she does not at all 
object to it. And now, observe, when anyone comes, she 
knows well enough that I am not fit to he seen, and so 
does not make any attempt to produce me. — My paper is 
almost filled, and I have still a great many things to 
say to you; but as my affection for you is great, I cannot 
find in my heart to cross such writing as this, and will 
keep them all till another opportunity. When shall I 
have more of Meisterf I do not know yet what to think 
of it. I cannot separate your interest in it from Goethe's 
or my own opinion of it from what is likely to be the 
opinion of the public. I wish however, it had not been 
so — queer. My Mother sends her best regards. She was 
highly pleased with your last Letter. Depend upon it, 
my Friend, it is for the good of us both that she is 
admitted into our correspondence. So remember! no 
darlings or anything of that nature, — in English; but 
never mind that: my heart supplies them for you, wher- 
'Bver they can be crammed in. When will you write? 
On Tuesday, at farthest. — God bless you ever! 

Devotedly yours, j^^^^ y^^^^^^ 



Mt 22] JANE WELSH CARLYLE 235 

[^t. 22] 

To Thomas Carlyle 
["hope deferred"; lord byron] 

Haddington, 20tli May, 1824. 

In the name of Heaven why don't you write to me? 
I have waited day after day in the utmost impatience; 
and hope deferred has not only made my heart sick, but 
is like to drive me out of my judgement. 

For Godsake write the instant this reaches you, if you 
have not done it before. I shall learn no lesson, settle 
to no occupation, till I have your Letter. Wretch! You 
cannot conceive what anxiety I am in about you. One 
moment I imagine you ill or in trouble of some sort; 
the next tired of me; the next something else as bad. 
In short there is no end to my imaginings. 

I do not think that in the whole course of our corre- 
spondence so long an interval has ever elapsed before : 
never but when we quarrelled — and this time there is 
no quarrel! To add to my perplexities, there have I had 
a Letter from that stupendous Ass the Orator,* telling 
me such nonsensical things; and among the rest, that he 
is full of joy because Thomas Carlyle is to be with him 
this month! Can he mean you? This month! and 
twenty days of it already past and gone! The man must 
have been delirious when he wrote such an impossible 
story. You can never, never mean to be in London this 
month! You promised to be here before you went, in 
words that it would be impiety to doubt. I have looked 
forward to your coming for weeks. You cannot dream 
of disappointing me! 

What I would give to be assured this moment that 
excessive occupation is the sole cause of your present 
neglectfulness : that "devils" are dunning you for the 
rest of your book, and that you are merely giving your- 
self all to Meister just now that you. may the sooner 
be all for me. Is it not hard? This is the only com- 
fortable conjecture I can form to explain your silence; 
and yet I can never believe in it for more than a minute 
at a time. Were I but certain that all is really well, 

* Edward Irving. 



236 JANE WELSH CAKLYLE [^t. 25 

what a Devil of a rage I would be in with you! Write, 
write. — I will tell you about my visit to London, then; 
I have no heart for it now. What an idiot I was ever 
to think that man so estimable! But I am done with 
his Preachership now and forever. 

And Byron is dead! I was told it all at once in a 
roomful of people. My God, if they had said that the 
sun or the moon had gone out of the heavens, it could 
not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and 
dreary blank in the creation than the words, "Byron is 
dead!" I have felt quite cold and dejected ever since: 
all my thoughts have been fearful and dismal. I wish 
you was come. 

Yours forever affectionately, 

Jane Welsh. 
[.Et. 25] 

To Mrs. George Welsh 

["one who holds his patent of xobility from almighty 

god"] 

Templaxd, 1st October, 1826. 
My dear Mrs. Welsh, — 

... It were no news to tell you what a momentous 
matter I have been busied with; "not to know that would 
argue yourself unknown." For a marriage is a topic 
suited to the capacities of all living; and, in this, as in 
every known instance, has been made the most of. But, 
for as much breath as has been wasted on "my Situation/' 
I have my own doubts whether they have given you any 
right idea of it. They would tell you, I should suppose, 
first and foremost, that my Intended is poor: (for that it 
requires na great depth of sagacity to discover), and, in 
the next place, most likely, indulge in some criticisms 
scarce flattering, on his birth (the more likely, if their 
own birth happened to be mean or doubtful) ; and, if 
they happened to be vulgar-fine people with disputed 
pretensions to good looks, they would, to a certainty, set 
him down as unpolished and ill-looking. But a hundred 
chances to one, they would not tell you he is among the 
cleverest men of his day; and not the cleverest only but 
the most enlightened! that he possesses all the qualities 
I deem essential in my Husband, a warm true heart to 



^t.^44] JANE WELSH CAKLYLE 237 

love me, a towering intellect to command me, and a spirit 
of fire to be the guiding star of my life. Excellence of 
this sort always requires some degree of superiority in 
those who duly appreciate it: in the eyes of the canaille — 
poor soulless wretches! — it is mere foolishness, and it is 
only the canaille who babble about other people's affairs. 
Such then is this future Husband of mine; not a gr^eat 
man according to the most common sense of the word, 
but truly great in its natural, proper sense; a scholar, a 
poet, a philosopher, a wise and noble man, one who holds 
his patent of nobility from Almighty God, and whose 
high stature of manhood is not to be measured by the 
inch-rule of Lilliputs! — ^\Vill you like him? No matter 
whether you do or not- — since I like him in the deepest 
part of my soul. I would invite, you to my wedding, if 
I meant to invite any one; but, to my taste, such cere- 
monies cannot be too private: besides by making dis- 
tinctions among my relatives on the occasion, I should 
be sure to give offence; and, by God's blessing, I will 
have no one there who does not feel kindly both towards 
him and me. . . . 



[^t. 44] 

To Thomas Carlyle 
[an evening party] 
Liverpool^ Saturday, Aug. 16, 1845. 
Dearest, — 

I never know whether a letter is welcomer when it 
arrives after having been impatiently waited for, or like 
yesterday's, "quite promiscuously," when I was standing 
"on the broad basis" of, "Blessed are they who do not 
hope, for they shall not be disappointed!" I assure you 
I am the only person obliged by your writing; it makes 
a very palpable difference in my amiability throughout 
the day whether I have a letter to begin it with. 

Last night we went, according to programme, to Mrs. 

A 's, and "it is but fair to state" that the drive there 

and back in the moonlight v/as the best of it. The party 
did me no ill, however; it was not a Unitarian crush like 
the last, but adapted to the size of the room: select. 



238 JANE WELSH CAELYLE [^t, 44 

moreover, and with the crowning grace of an open win- 
dow. There was an old gentleman who did the impossible 

to inspire me with a certain respect; Y they called 

him, and his glory consists in owning the Prince's Park, 
and throwing it open to "poors." Oh, what a dreadful 
little old man! He plied me with questions, and sug- 
gestions about you, till I was within a trifle of putting 
"my finger in the pipy o' 'im." "How did Mr. Carlyle 
treat Oliver Cromwell's crimes?" "His what?" said I. 
"The atrocities he exercised on the Irish." "Oh, you 
mean massacring a garrison or two? All that is treated 
very briefly." "But Mr. Carlyle must feel a just horror 
of that." "Horror? Oh, none at all, I assure you! He 
regards it as the only means under the circumstances to 
save bloodshed." The little old gentleman bounced back 
in his chair, and spread out his two hands, like a duck 
about to swim, while there burst from his lips a groan 
that made everyone look at us. What had 1 said to 

their Mr. Y ? By-and-by my old gentleman returned 

to the charge. "Mr. Carlyle must be feeling much de- 
lighted about the Academical Schools ?" "Oh, no ! he has 
been so absorbed in his own work lately that he has not 
been at leisure to be delighted aJbout anything?" "But, 
madam! a man may attend to his own work, and attend 
at the same time to questions of great public interest." 
"Do you think so? I don't." Another bounce on the 
chair. Then, with a sort of awe, as of a "demon more 
wicked than your wife": "Do you not think, madam, 
that more good might be done by taking up the history 
of the actual time than of past ages? Such a time as 
this, so full of improvements in arts and sciences, the 
whole face of Europe getting itself changed! Suppose 
Mr. Carlyle should bring out a yearly volume about all 

this ?" This was Y 's last flight of eloquence with me, 

for catching the eyes of a lady (your Miss L of 

"The Gladiator") fixed on me with the most ludicrous 
expression of sympathy, I fairly burst out laughing till 
the tears ran down; and when I had recovered myself, 
the old gentleman had turned for compensation to J. 

M . J. had reasons for being civil to him which I 

had not, Mr. Y being his landlord; but he seemed 

to be answering him in his sleep, while his waking 



^t. 44] JANE WELSH CARLYLE 239 

thoughts were intent on an empty chair betwixt Geral- 
dine"^ and me, and eventually he made it his own. As 

if to deprecate my confounding him with these Y 's, 

he immediately began to speak in the most disrespectful 
manner of Mechanics' Institutes "and all that sort of 
thing"; and then we got on these eternal Vestiges of 
Creation, which he termed, rather happily, "animated 
mud." Geraldine and Mrs. Paulet were wanting to en- 
gage him in a doctrinal discussion, which they are ex- 
tremely fond of: "Look at Jane," suddenly exclaimed 
Geraldine, "she is quizzing us in her own mind. You 

must know" (to M ) "we cannot get Jane to care a 

bit about doctrines." "I should think not," said M , 

with great vivacity; "Mrs. Carlyle is the most concrete 
woman that I have seen for a long while." "Oh," said 
Geraldine, "she puts all her wisdom into practice, and 

so never gets into scrapes." "Yes," said M in a tone 

"significant of much," "to keep out of doctrines is the 
only way to keep out of scrapes!" Was not that a 
creditable speech in a LTnitarian? 

Miss L^ is a frank, rather agreeable, woman forty 

or thereabouts, who looks as if she had gone through a 
good deal of hardship; not "a domineering genius" by 
any. means, but with sense enough for all practical pur- 
poses, such as admiring you to the skies, and Cromwell 
too. The rest of the people were "chiefly musical, Mr. 

Carlyle." Mrs. A is very much fallen off in her 

singing since last year; I suppose, from squalling so 
much to her pupils. She is to dine here to-day, and 

ever so many people besides, to meet these R 's. 

Doubtless we shall be "borne through with an honour- 
able throughbearing ;" but quietness is best. 

And now I must go and walk, while the sun shines. 
Our weather here is very showery and cold. I heard a 
dialogue the other morning betwixt Mr. Paulet and his 
factotum, which amused me much. The factotum was 
mowing the lawn. Mr. Paulet threw up the breakfast- 
room window, and called to him : "Knolles ! how looks my 
wheat?" "Very distressed indeed, sir!" "Are we much 
fallen down?" "No, sir, but we are black, very black." 

* Geraldine Jewsbury, the romatic friend of Mrs. Carlyle, who fur- 
nished Froude with some of his doubtful material. 



240 JANE WELSH CARLYLE [^t. 44 

"All this rain, I should have thought, would have made 
us fall down?" "Where the crops are heavy they are a 
good deal laid, sir, but it would take a vast of rain to 
lay us!" "Oh, then, Knolles, it is because we are not 
powerful enough that we are not fallen down?" "Sir?" 
"It is because we are not rich enough?" "Beg pardon, 
sir, but I don't quite understand?" Mr. Paulet shut the 
window and returned to his breakfast. God keep you, 
dear. Your own 

J. 0. 

[^t.44] 

To Thomas Carlyle 
[dickens as bobadil; tennyson] 

Tuesday, Sept. 23, 1845. 
"Nothink" for you to-day in the shape of inclosure, 
unless I inclose a letter from Mrs. Paulet to myself, 
which you will find as "entertaining" to the full as any 
of mine. And nothink to be told either, except all about 
the play; and upon my honour, I do not feel as if I had 
penny-a-liner genius enough, this cold morning, to make 
much entertainment out of that. Enough to clasp one's 
hand, and exclaim, like Helen before the Virgin and 
Child, "Oh, how expensive!" But "how did the creatures 
get through it?" Too well; and not well enough! The 
public theatre, scenes painted by Stansfield, costumes 
"rather exquisite," together with the certain amount of 
proficiency in the amateurs, overlaid all idea of private 
theatricals; and, considering it as public theatricals, the 
acting was "most insipid," not one performer among 
them that could be called good, and none that could be 
called absolutely bad. Douglas Jerrold seemed to me the 
best, the oddity of his appearance greatly helping him; 
he played Stephen the Cull [Gull]. Eorster as Kitely 
and Dickens as Captain Bobadil were much on a par; 
but Forster preserved his identity, even through his loft- 
iest flights of Macreadyism ; while poor little Dickens, all 
painted in black and red, and affecting the voice of a 
man of six feet, would have been unrecognizable for the 
mother that bore him ! On the whole, to get up the small- 
est interest in the thing, one needed to be always re- 



^t 44] JANE WELSH CARLYLE 241 

minding oneself: "all these actors were once men!" and 
will be men again to-morrow morning. The greatest won- 
der for me was how. they had contrived to get together 
some six or seven hundred ladies and gentlemen (judg- 
ing from the clothes) at this season of the year; and 
all utterly unknown to me, except some half-dozen. 

So long as I kept my seat in the dress circle I recog- 
nized only Mrs. Macready (in one of the four private 
boxes), and in my nearer neighbourhood Sir Alexander 
and Lady Gordon. But in the interval betwixt the play 
and the farce I took a notion to make my way to Mrs. 
Macready. John, of course, declared the thing "clearly 
impossible, no use trying it;" but a servant of the thea- 
tre, overhearing our debate, politely offered to escort me 
where I wished; and then John, having no longer any 
difficulties to surmount, followed, to have his share in 
what advantages might accrue from the change. Passing 
through a long dim passage, I came on a tall man leant 
to the wall, with his head touching the ceiling like a 
caryatid, to all appearance asleep, or resolutely trying it 
under most unfavourable circumstances. "Alfred Tenny- 
son!" I exclaimed in joyful surprise. "Well!" said he, 
taking the hand I held out to him, and forgetting to let 
it go again. "I did not know you were in town," said I. 
"I should like to know who you are," said he; "I know 
that I know you, but I cannot tell your name." And 
I had actually to name myself to him. Then he woke up 
in good earnest, and said he had been meaning to come to 
Chelsea. "But Carlyle is in Scotland," I told him with 
due humility. "So I heard from Spedding already, but 
I asked Spedding, would he go with me to see Mrs. 
Carlyle? and he said he would." I told him if he really 
meant to come, he had better not wait for backing, under 
the present circumstances; and then pursued my way to 
the Macreadys' box; where I was received by William 
(whom I had not divined) with a "Gracious heavens!" 
and spontaneous dramatic start, which made me all but 
answer, "Gracious heavens!" and start dramatically in 
my turn. And then I was kissed all round by his women; 

and poor Nell Gw;s"n, Mrs. M G , seemed almost 

rtushed by the general enthusiasm on the distracted idea 
of kissinor me also! They would not let me return to 



242 JANE WELSH CARLYLE [.Et. 44 

my stupid place, but put in a third chair for me in front 
of their box; "and the latter end of that woman was 
better than the beginning." Macready was in perfect 
ecstacies over the "Life of Schiller," spoke of it with 
tears in his eyes. As "a sign of the times," I may men- 
tion that in the box opposite sat the Duke of Devon- 
shire, with Payne Collier! Next to us were D'Orsay and 
"Milady!" 

Between eleven and twelve it was all over — and the 
practical result? Eight-and-sixpence for a fly, and a 
headache for twenty-four hours! I went to bed as wear- 
ied as a little woman could be, and dreamt that I was 
plunging through a quagmire seeking some herbs which 
were to save the life of Mrs. Maurice; and that Maurice 
was waiting at home for them in an agony of impatience, 
while I could not get out of the mud-water! 

Craik arrived next evening (Sunday), to make his 
compliments. Helen had gone to visit numbers. John 
was smoking in the kitchen. I w^as lying on the sofa, 
headachey, leaving Craik to put himself to the chief 
expenditure of wind, when a cab drove up. Mr. Stra- 
chey? No. Alfred Tennyson alone! Actually, by a 
superhuman effort of volition he had put himself into a 
cab, nay, brought himself away from a dinner party, and 
was there to smoke and talk with me! — by myself — me! 
But no such blessedness was in store for him. Craik 
prosed, and John babbled for his entertainment ; and I, 
whom he had come to see, got scarcely any speech with 
him. The exertion, however, of having to provide him 
with tea, through my own unassisted ingenuity (Helen 
being gone for the evening) drove away my headache; 
also perhaps a little feminine vanity at having inspired 
such a man with the energy to take a cab on his own 
responsibility, and to throw himself on providence for 
getting away again! He stayed till eleven, Craik sitting 

him out, as he sat out Lady H , and would sit out 

the Virgin Mary should he find her here. . . . 

Yours, 
• J. C. 



.Et. 51] JANE WELSH CAKLYLE 243 

[.Et. 51] 

To Thomas Carlyle 
[plumbers, carpenters, and bricklayers] 

5 Cheyxe Kow: 
Friday night, July 24, 1852. 
Oh, my ! I wonder if I shall hear to-morrow morning', 
and what I shall hear ! Perhaps that somebody drove you 
wild with snoring, and that you killed him and threw 
him in the sea ! Had the boatmen upset the boat on the 
way back, and drowned little Nero and me, on purpose, 
I could hardly have taken it ill of them, seeing they 
"were but men, of like passions with yourself." But on 
the contrary, they behaved most civilly to us, offered to 
land us at any pier we liked, and said not a word to 
me about the sixpence, so I gave it to them as a free 
gift. We came straight home in the steamer, where 
Nero went immediately to sleep, and I to work. 

Miss Wilson called in the afternoon, extremely agree- 
able; and after tea Ballantyne came, and soon after 
Kingslej'-. Ballantyne gave me the ten pounds, and 
Kingsley told me about his wife — that she was ''the 
adorablest wife man ever had!" Neither of these men 
stayed long. I went to bed at eleven, fell asleep at 
three, and rose at six. The two plumbers were rushing 
about the kitchen with boiling lead; an additional car- 
penter was waiting for my directions about "the cup- 
board" at the bottom of the kitchen stair. The two usual 
carpenters were hammering at the floor and windows of 
the drawing-room. The bricklayer rushed in, in plain 
clothes, measured the windows for stone sills (?), rushed 
out again, and came no more that day. After breakfast 
I fell to clearing out the front bedroom for the brick- 
layers, removing everything into your room. When I 
had just finished, a wild-looking stranger, with a paper 
cap, rushed up the stairs, three steps at a time, and told 
me he was "sent by Mr. Morgan to get on with the 
painting of Mr. Carlyle's bedroom during his absence!" 
I was so taken by surprise that I did not feel at first 
to have any choice in the matter, and told him he must 
wait two hours till all that furniture was taken — some- 
where. 



244 JANE WELSH CAKLYLE [^t. 51 

Then I came in mind that the window and doors had 
to be repaired, and a little later that the floor was to be 
taken up ! Being desirous, however, not to refuse the 
good the gods had provided me, I told the man he might 
begin to paint in my bedroom; but there also some 
woodwork was unfinished. 

The carpenters thought they could get it ready by 
next morning. So I next cleared myself a road into 
your bedroom, and fell to moving all the things of mine 
up there also. Certainly no lady in London did such 
a hard day's work. Not a soul came to interrupt me till 
night, when stalked in for half-an-hour, uncom- 
monly dull. "It must have taken a great deal to make 
a man so dull as that!" I never went out till ten at 
night, when I took a turn or two on Battersea Bridge, 
without having my throat cut. 

My attempts at sleeping last night were even more 
futile than the preceding one. A dog howled repeatedly, 
near hand, in that awful manner which is understood to 
prognosticate death, which, together with being "in a new 
position," kept me awake till five. And after six it was 
impossible to lie, for the plumbers were in the garret, 
and the bricklayers in the front bedroom! Mr. Morgan 
came after breakfast, and settled to take up the floor in 
your bedroom at once. So to-day all the things have had 
to be moved out again down to my bedroom, and the 
painter put off; and to-night I am to "pursue sleep under 
difficulties" in my own bed again. They got on fast 
enough with the destructive part. The chimney is down 
and your floor half off! 

After tea I "cleaned myself," and walked up to see 
Miss Farrar. She and her sister were picnicking at 
Hampton Court; but the old mother was very glad of 
me, walked half-way back with me, and gave me ice at 
Gunter's in passing. I am to have a dinner-tea with 
them next Wednesday. And to-morrow I am to give the 
last sitting for my picture, and take tea at Mrs. Sketch- 
ley's. And now I must go to bed again — more's the pity. 

I shall leave this open, in case of a letter from you in 
the morning. 



^t. 55] JANE WELSH CAELYLE 245 

Saturday. 

Thanks God too for some four hours of sleep last night. 
I don't mind the uproar a bit now that you are out of it. 

Love to Mr. Erskine; tell him to write to me. 

Ever yours, 
[^t. 55] J. W. C. 

To A Friend 
[on baking bread] 

January 11, 1857. 

... So many talents are wasted, so many enthusi- 
asms turned to smoke, so many lives split for want of a 
little patience and endurance, for w^ant of understanding 
and laying to heart what you have so well expressed in 
your verses — the meaning of the Present, — for want of 
recognizing that it is not the greatness or littleness of 
"the duty nearest hand," but the spirit in which one does 
it, that makes one's doing noble or mean ! I can't think 
how people who have any natural ambition and any sense 
of power in them, escape going mad in a world like this 
without the recognition of that. I know I was very near 
mad w^hen I found it out for myself (as one has to find 
out for one's self everything that is to be of any real 
practical use to one). 

Shall I tell you how it came into my head? Perhaps 
it may be of comfort to you in similar moments of fa- 
tigue and disgust. I had gone with my husband to live 
on a little estate of peat hog that had descended to me 
all the way down from John Welsh, the Covenanter, who 
married a daughter of John Knox. That didn't, I am 
ashamed to say, make me feel Craigenputtock a whit less 
of a peat bog, and a most dreary, untoward place to live 
at. In fact, it was sixteen miles distant on every side 
from all the conveniences of life, shops, and even post 
office. Further, we were very poor, and further and worst, 
being an only child, and brought up to "great prospects," 
I was sublimely ignorant of every branch of useful knowl- 
edge, though a capital Latin scholar and very fair mathe- 
matician ! ! 

It behooved me in these astonishing circumstances to 
learn to sew. Husbands, I was shocked to find, wore their 
stockings into holes, and were always losing buttons, and 



246 JANE WELSH CAKLYLE [^t. 55 

/ was expected to "look to all that"; also it behooved me 
to learii to cook! No capable servant choosing to live at 
such an out-of-the-way place, and my husband having 
bad digestion, which complicated my difficulties dread- 
fully. The hread, above all, brought from Dumfries, 
"soured on his stomach" (O heaven!), and it was plainly 
my duty as a Christian wife to bake at home. 

So I sent for Corbett's "Cottage Economy," and fell 
to work at a loaf of bread. But, knowing nothing about 
the process of fermentation or the heat of ovens, it came 
to pass that my loaf got put into the oven at the time 
that myself ought to have been put into bed; and I re- 
mained the only person not asleep in a house in the mid- 
dle of a desert. 

One o'clock struck, and then two, and then three; and 
still I was sitting there in an immense solitude, my whole 
body aching with weariness, my heart aching with a sense 
of forlornness and degradation. That I, who had been 
so petted at home, whose comfort had been studied by 
everybody in the house, who had never been required to 
do anything but cultivate 'my mind, should have to pass 
all those hours of the night in watching a loaf of hread, 
— which mightn't turn out bread after all ! Such thoughts 
maddened me, till I laid down my head on the table ajid 
sobbed aloud. 

It was then that somehow the idea of Benvenuto Cellini 
sitting up all night watching his Perseus in the furnace 
came into my head, and suddenly I asked myself: "After 
all, in the sight of the Upper Powers, what is the mighty 
difference between a statue of Perseus and a loaf of bread, 
so that each be the thing one's hand has found to do? 
The man's determined will, his energy, his patience, his 
resource, were the really admirable things, of which his 
statue of Perseus was the mere chance expression. If he 
had been a woman living at Craigenputtock, with a dys- 
peptic husband, sixteen miles from a baker, and he a 
bad one, all of these same qualities would have come out 
more fitly in a good loaf of bread." 

I cannot express what consolation this germ of an idea 
spread over my uncongenial life during the years we lived 
at that savage place, where my two immediate predeces- 
sors had gone mad, and the third had taken to drinh. . . 



[^t. 43] THOMAS HOOD 

1799-1845 
To Charles Dickens 

[an AMERICAN FRIENd] 

17, Elm Tree Eoad, London, 
Oct. 12th, 1842. 
Dear Dicltens, 

Can you let me have an early copy of the "American 
Notes," so that I may review it in the "New Monthly"? 
Is it really likely to be ready as advertised? I aim this 
at Devonshire Place, supposing you to be returned, for 
with these winds 'tis no fit time for the coast. But your 
bones are not so weather unwise (for ignorance is bliss) 
as mine. I should have asked this by word of mouth in 
Devonshire Place, but the weather has kept me in doors. 
It is no fiction that the complaint, derived from Dutch 
malaria seven years since, is revived by Easterly winds. 
Otherwise I have been better than usual, and "never say 
die." Don't forget about the Yankee Notes: I never had 
but one American friend, and lost him thro' a good crop 
of pears. He paid us a visit in England; whereupon in 
honour of him, a pear tree, which had never borne fruit 
to speak of within memory of man, was loaded with 90 
dozen brown somethings. Our gardener said they were 
a keeping sort, and would be good at Christmas; where- 
upon, as our Jonathan was on the eve of sailing for the 
States, we sent him a few dozens to dessert him on the 
voyage. Some he put at the bottom of a trunk (he wrote 
to us) to take to America; but he could not have been 
gone above a day or two, when all . our pears began to 
rot! His would, of course, by sympathy, and I presume 
spoilt his linen or clothes, for I have never heard of him 
since. Perhaps he thought I had done him on purpose, 
and for sartin the tree, my accomplice, never bore any 
more pears, good or bad, after that supernatural crop. 

Pray present my respects for me to Mrs. Dickens. How 
she must enjoy being at home and discovering her chil- 
dren, after her Columbusing, and only discovering 
America. 

I am, my dear Dickens, 

Yours very truly, 
Thomas Hoon. 
247 



248 THOMAS HOOD [.Et. 45 

Do you want a motto for your book ? Coleridge in his 
Pantisocracy days, used frequently to exclaim in solilo- 
quy, "I wish I was in A-me-ri-ca!" Perhaps you might 
find something in the advertisements of Oldridge's ''Balm 
of Columbia" or the "American Soothing Syrup' — query, 
Gin twist? 

[^t. 45] 

To A Child (May Elliot) 
[at the seaside] 

Devonshire Lodge, New Finchley Koad, 
July 1st, 1844. 
My dear May, 

How do you do, and how do you like the sea ? not much 
perhaps, it's "so big." But shouldn't you like a nice 
little ocean, that you could put in a pan? Yet the sea, 
although it looks rather ugly at first, is very useful, and, 
if I were near it this dry summer, I would carry it all 
home, to water the garden with at Stratford, and it would 
be sure to drown all the blights, May-^ies and all! 

I remember that, when I saw the sea, it used some- 
times to be very fussy, and fidgetty, and did not always 
wash itself quite clean; but it was very fond of fun. 
Have the waves ever run after you yet, and turned your 
little two shoes into pumps, full of water? 

If you want a joke you might push Dunnie into the 
sea, and then fish for him as they do for a Jack. But 
don't go in yourself', and don't let the baby go in and 
swim away, although he is the shrimp of the family. Did 
you ever taste the sea-water? The fishes are so fond of 
it they keep drinking it all the day long. Dip your little 
finger in, and then suck it to see how it tastes. A glass 
of it warm, with sugar atid a grate of nutmeg, would 
quite astonish you ! The water of the sea is so saline, I 
wonder nobody catches salt fish in it. I should think a 
good way would be to go out in a butter-boat, with a 
little melted for sauce. Have you been bathed yet in the 
sea, and were you afr^iid? I was, the first time, and the 
time before that; and dear me, how I kicked, and screamed 
— or, at least, meant to scream, but the sea, ships and 



^t. 45] THOMAS HOOD 249 

all, began to run into my mouth, and so I shut it up. I 
think I see you, being dipped in the sea, screwing your 
eyes up, and putting your nose, like a button, into your 
mouth, like a button-hole, for fear of getting another 
smell and taste ! By the bye, did you ever dive your head 
under water with your legs up in the air like a duck, and 
try whether you could cry "Quack?" Some animals can! 
I would try, but there is no sea here, and so I am forced 
to dip into books. I wish there were such nice green hills 
here as there are at Sandgate. They must be very nice 
to roll down, especially if there are no furze bushes to 
prickle one, at the bottom! Do you remember how the 
thorns stuck in us like a penn'orth of mixed pins at Wan- 
stead? I have been very ill, and am so thin now, I could 
stick myself into a prickle. My legs, in particular, are 
so wasted away, that somebody says my pins are only 
needles; and I am so weak, I dare say you could push 
me down on the floor and right through the carpet, un- 
less it was a strong pattern. I am sure, if I were at 
Sandgate, you could carry me to the post office and fetch 
my letters. Talking of carrying, I suppose you have 
donkeys at Sandgate, and ride about on them. Mind 
and always call them "donkeys," for if you call them 
asses, it might reach such long ears! I knew a donkey 
once that kicked a man for calling him Jack instead of 
John. 

Tliere are no flowers, I suppose, on the beach, or I 
would ask you to bring me a bouquet, as you used at 
Stratford. But there are little crabs! If you would 
catch one for me, and teach it to dance the Polka, it 
would make me quite happy; for I have not had any toys 
or playthings for a long time. Did you ever try, like a 
little crab, to run two ways at once? See if you can do 
it, for it is good fun ; never mind tumbling over your- 
self a little at first. It would be a good plan to hire a 
little crab, for an hour a day, to teach baby to crawl, if 
he can't walk, and, if I was his mamma, I ivould too! 
Bless him ! But I must not write on him any more — he is 
so soft, and I have nothing but steel pens. 

And now good bye, Fanny has made my tea, and I 
must drink it before it gets too hot, as we all were last 
Sunday week. They say the glass was 88 in the shade. 



250 KUFUS CHOATE [^t. 53 

which is a great age! The last fair breeze I blew dozens 
of kisses for you, but the wind changed, and I am afraid 

took them all to Miss H or somebody that it shouldn't. 

Give my love to everybody and my compliments to all 
the rest, and remember, I am, my dear May, your loving 

friend, 

Thomas Hood. 

P.S. Don't forget my little crab to dance the Polka, 
and pray write to me as soon as you can't, if it's only a 
line. 



[.^t. 53] EUFUS CHOATE 

1799-1859 
To His Daughter 
[new^s about himself] 

Monday, August, 1853. 
Dear Sallie, — 

The accompanying letter came to me to-day, and I send 
it with alacrity. I wish you would study calligraphy in 
it, if what I see not is as well written as what I do. I 
got quietly home, to a cool, empty house, unvexed of 
mosquito, sleeping to the drowsy cricket. It lightened a 
little, thundered still less, and rained half an hour; but 
the sensation, the consciousness that the Sirian-tartarean 
summer is really gone — though it is sad that so much of 
life goes too — is delightful. Next summer will probably 
be one long April or October. By the way, the dream of 
the walnut grove and the light-house is finished. They 
will not sell, and the whole world is to choose from yet. 
I see and hear nothing of nobody. I bought a capital 
book to-day by Bungener, called "Voltaire and his Times," 
fifty pages of which I have run over. He is the author 
of "Three Sermons under Louis XV.," and is keen, 
bright, and just, according to my ideas, as far as I have 
gone. My course this week is rudely broken in upon by 
the vileness and vulgarity of business, and this day has 
been lean of good books and rich thoughts, turning chiefly 
on whether charcoal is an animal nuisance, and whether 
Dr. Manning's will shall stand. Still, Rufus will be glad 



^t. 25] THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 251 

to hear I read my Machines and Cicero and German 
Martial, and, as I have said, this Bungener. 

I wish you would all come home; that is, that your 
time had arrived. Pick up, dear daughter, health, nerves, 
and self-trust, and come here to make the winter of our 
discontent glorious summer. 

Thank your dear mother and Eufus for their letters. 
I hope for Minnie a neck without a crick, and a lot with- 
out a crook, if one may be so jinglesome. One of the 
Choates of Salem called in my absence — if Daniel did 
not see a doppelgdnger, in a dream — but which, where he 
is, what he wants, where he goes, or how he fares, I know 
not. I would invite him to dine, if I knew where he was. 
Best love to all. Tell your mother I don't believe I shall 
write her for two or three days, but give her, and all, my 
love. I like the court-house prospect and the Bucolical 
cow, and verdant lawn much, as Minnie says. Good-by, 
all. 

R. C. 

[^t. 25] 

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 

1800-1859 
To HIS Father 

[SYDNEY smith] 

York, July 21st, 1826. 
My dear Father, — 

The other day as I was changing my neckcloth, which 
my wig had disfigured, my good landlady knocked at the 
door of my bedroom, and told me that Mr. Smith wished 
to see me, and was in my room below. Of all names by 
which men are called, there is none which conveys' a less 
determinate idea to the mind than that of Smith. Was 
he on the circuit ? For I do not know half the names, of 
my companions. Was he a special messenger from Lon- 
don ? Was he a York attorney coming to be preyed upon, 
or a beggar coming to prey upon me; a barber to solicit 
the dressing of my wig, or a collector for the Jews' So- 
ciety? Down I went, and, to my utter amazement, be- 
held the Smith of Smiths, Sydney Smith, alias Peter 
Plymley. I had forgotten his very existence till I dis- 



252 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY [.Et. 35 

cerned the queer contrast between his black coat and his 
snow-white head, and the equally curious contrast be- 
tween the clerical amplitude of his person and the most 
unclerical wit, whim, and petulance of his eye. I shook 
hands with him very heartily; and on the Catholic ques- 
tion we immediately fell, regretted Evans, triumphed over 
Lord George Beresford, and abused the bishops. He then 
very kindly urged me to spend the time between the close 
of the Assizes and the commencement of the Sessions at 
his house; and was so hospitably pressing that I at last 
agreed to go thither on Saturday afternoon. He is to 
drive me over again into York on Monday morning. I 
am very well pleased at having this opportunity of be- 
coming better acquainted with a man who, in spite of 
innumerable affectations and oddities, is certainly one of 
the wittiest and most original writers of our times. Ever 
yours affectionately, 

.T. B. M. 

[.Et. 35] 

To Thomas Flower Ellis 

[life IX INDIA; READING THE CLASSICS] 

Calcutta, May 30th, 1836. 
Dear Ellis — 

I have just received your letter dated December 28th. 
How time flies! Another hot season has almost passed 
away, and we are daily expecting the beginning of the 
rains. Cold season, hot season, and rainy season are all 
much the same to me. I shall have been two years on 
Indian ground in less than a fortnight, and I have not 
taken ten grains of solid, or a pint of liquid, medicine 
during the whole of that time. If I judged only from 
my own sensations, I should say that this climate is ab- 
surdly maligned; but the yellow, spectral figures which 
surround me serve to correct the conclusions which I 
should be inclined to draw from the state of my own 
health. 

One execrable effect the climate produces. It destroys 
all the works of man with scarcely one exception. Steel 
rusts; razors lose their edge; thread decays; clothes fall 
to pieces; books molder aM^ay and drop out of their bind- 
ings; plaster cracks; timber rots; matting is in shreds. 



^t. 35] THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 253 

The sun, the steam of this vast alluvial tract, and the in- 
finite armies of white ants, make such havoc with build- 
ings that a house requires a complete repair every three 
years. Ours was in this situation about three months 
ago; and, if we had determined to brave the rains with- 
out any precautions, we should, in all probability, have 
had the roof down on our heads. Accordingly, we were 
forced to migrate for six weeks from our stately apart- 
ments and our flower-beds to a dungeon where we were 
stifled with the stench of native cookery, and deafened 
by the noise of native music. At last we have returned 
to our house. We found it all snow-white and pea-green; 
and we rejoice to think that we shall not again be under 
the necessity of quitting it till we quit it for a ship 
bound on a voyage to London. 

We have been for some months in the middle of what 
the people here think a political storm. To a person ac- 
customed to the hurricanes of English faction this sort 
of tempest in a horse-pond is merely ridiculous. We have 
put the English settlers up the country under the ex- 
clusive jurisdiction of the company's courts in civil ac- 
tions in which they are concerned with natives. The 
English settlers are perfectly contented; but the lawyers 
of the Supreme Court have set up a yelp which they 
think terrible, and which has infinitely diverted me. They 
have selected me as the object of their invectives, and I 
am generally the theme of five or six columns of prose 
and verse daily. I have not patience to read a tenth 
part of what they put forth. The last ode in my praise 
which I perused began. 

Soon we hope they will recall ye, 
Tom Macaulay, Tom Macaulay. 

The last prose which I read was a parallel between me 
and Lord Strafford. 

My mornings, from five to nine, are quite my own. I 
still give them to ancient literature. I have read Aris- 
tophanes twice through since Christmas; and have also 
read Herodotus, and Thucydides, again. I got into a 
way last year of reading a Greek play every Sunday. I 
began on Sunday, the 18th of October, with the "Prome- 



254 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY [^t. 35 

theus," and next Sunday I shall finish with the "Cy- 
clops" of Euripides. Euripides has made a complete con- 
quest of me. It has been unfortunate for him that we 
have so many of his pieces. It has, on the other hand, 
I suspect, been fortunate for Sophocles that so few of 
his have come down to us. Almost every play of Soph- 
ocles which is now extant was one of his masterpieces. 
There is hardly one of them which is not mentioned with 
high praise by some ancient writer. Yet one of them, 
the "Trachiniae," is, to my thinking, very poor and in- 
sipid. Now, if we had nineteen plays of Sophocles, of 
which twelve or thirteen should be no better than the 
"Trachinise" — and if, on the other hand, only seven pieces 
of Euripides had come down to us, and if those seven 
had been the ''Medea," the "Bacchae," the "Iphigenia in 
Aulis," the "Orestes," the "Phoenissse," the "Hippolytus," 
and the "Alcestis" — I am not sure that the relative po- 
sition which the two poets now hold in our estimation 
would not be greatly altered. 

I have not done much in Latin. I have been employed 
in turning over several third-rate and fourth-rate writ- 
ers. After finishing Cicero, I read through the works of 
both the Senecas, father and son. There is a great deal 
in the "Controversise" both of curious information and 
of judicious criticism. As to the son, I can not bear him. 
His style affects me in something the same way with that 
of Gibbon. But Lucius Seneca's affectation is even more 
rank than Gibbon's. His works are made up of mottoes. 
There is hardly a sentence which might not be quoted; 
but to read him straight forward is like dining on noth- 
ing but anchovy sauce. I have read, as one does read 
such stuff, Valerius Maximus, Annseus Florus, Lucius 
Ampelius, and Aurelius Victor. I have also gone through 
Phaedrus. I am now better employed. I am deep in the 
"Annals" of Tacitus, and I am at the same time reading 
Suetonius. 

You are so rich in domestic comforts that I am in- 
clined to envy you. I am not, however, without my share. 
I am as fond of my little niece as her father. I pass an 
hour or more every day in nursing her, and teaching her 
to talk. She has got as far as Ba, Pa, and Ma; which, 
as she is not eight months old, we consider as pj*oofs of a 



^t. 41] THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 255 

genius little inferior to that of Shakspeare or Sir Isaac 
Newton. 

The municipal elections have put me in good spirits as 
to English politics. I was rather inclined to despondency. 

Ever yours affectionately, 

T. B. Macaulay. 
[^t. 41] 

To Macvey Napier 
[a defence of his diction] 

Albany, London, April 18th, 1842. 
My dear Napier, — 

I am much obliged to you for your criticisms on my 
article on Frederic. My copy of the Review I have lent, 
and can not therefore refer to it. I have, however, thought 
over what you say, and should be disposed to admit part 
of it to be just. But I have several distinctions and lim- 
itations to suggest. 

The charge to which I am most sensible is that of in- 
terlarding my sentences wuth French terms. I will not 
positively affirm that no such expression may have dropped 
from my pen, in writing hurriedly on a subject so very 
French. It is, however, a practice to which I am ex- 
tremely averse, and into which I could fall only by inad- 
vertence. I do not really know to what you allude; for 
as to words "Abbe" and "Parcaux-Cerfs," which I recol- 
lect, those surely are not open to objection. I remember 
that I carried my love of English in one or two places 
almost to the length of affectation. For example, I called 
the "Place des Victoires" the "Place of Victories;" and 
the "Fermier General" D'Etioles a "publican." I will 
look over the article again, when I get it into my hands, 
and try to discover to what you allude. 

The other charge, I confess, does not appear to me to 
be equally serious. I certainly should not, in regular 
history, use some of the phrases which you censure. But 
I do not consider a review of this sort as regular history, 
and I really think that, from the highest and most un- 
questionable authority, I could vindicate my practice. 
Take Addison, the model of pure and graceful writing. 
In his Spectators I find "wench," "baggage," "queer old 
put," "prig," "fearing that they should smoke the Knight." 



256 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY [^t. 41 

All these expressions I met this morning, in turning over 
two or three of his papers at breakfast. I would no more 
use the word "bore" or "awkward squad" in a composi- 
tion meant to be uniformly serious and earnest, than 
Addison would in a state paper have called Louis an "old 
put," or have described Shrewsbury and Argyle as "smok- 
ing" the design to bring in the Pretender. But I did not 
mean my article to be uniformly serious and earnest. If 
you judge of it as you would judge of a regular history, 
your censure ought to go very much deeper than it does, 
and to be directed against the substance as well as against 
the diction. The tone of many passages, nay, of whole 
pages, would justly be called flippant in a regular his- 
tory. .But I conceive that this sort of composition has 
its own character and its own laws. I do not claim the 
honour of having invented it; that praise belongs to 
Southey; but I may say that I have in some points im- 
proved upon his design. The manner of these little his- 
torical essays bears, I think, the same analogy to the man- 
ner of Tacitus or Gibbon which the manner of Ariosto 
bears to the manner of Tasso, or the manner of Shak- 
speare's historical plays to the manner of Sophocles. 
Ariosto, when he is grave and pathetic, is as grave and 
pathetic as Tasso; but he often takes a light, fleeting 
tone which suits him admirably, but which in Tasso 
would be quite out of place. The despair of Constance 
in Shakspeare is as lofty as that of Oedipus in Sophocles; 
but the levities of the bastard Faulconbridge would be 
utterly out of place in Sophocles. Yet we feel that they 
are not out of place in Shakspeare. 

So with these historical articles. Where the subject 
requires it, they may rise, if the author can manage it, 
to the highest altitudes of Thucydides. Then, again, they 
may without impropriety sink to the levity and colloquial 
ease of Horace Walpole's Letters. This is my theory. 
Whether I have succeeded in the execution is quite an- 
other question. You will, however, perceive that I am 
in no danger of taking similar liberties in my "History." 
I do, indeed, greatly disapprove of those notions which 
some writers have of the dignity of history. For fear of 
alluding to the vulgar concerns of private life, they take 
no notice of the circumstances which deeply affect the 



^t.41] THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 257 

happiness of nations. But I never thought of denying 
that the language of history ought to preserve a certain 
dignity. I would, however, no more attempt to preserve 
that dignity in a paper like this on Frederic than I would 
exclude from such a poem as "Don Juan" slang terms, 
because such terms would be out of place in "Paradise 
Lost," or Hudibrastic rhymes, because such rhymes would 
be shocking in Pope's "Iliad." 

As to the particular criticisms which you have made, 
I willingly submit my judgment to yours, though I think 
that I could say something on the other side. The first rule 
of all writing — that rule to which every other is subordi- 
nate — is that the words used by the writer shall be such 
as most fully and precisely convey his meaning to the 
great body of his readers. All considerations about the 
purity and dignity of style ought to bend to this con- 
sideration. To write what is not understood in its whole 
force for fear of using some word which was unknown 
to Swift or Dryden would be, I think, as absurd as to 
build an observatory like that at Oxford, from which 
it is impossible to observe, only for the purpose of ex- 
actly preserving the proportions of the Temple of the 
Winds at Athens. That a word which is appropriate to 
a particular idea, which every body, high and low, uses 
to express that idea, and which expresses that idea with 
a completeness which is not equaled by any other single 
word, and scarcely by any circumlocution, should be ban- 
ished from writing, seems to be a mere throwing-away of 
power. Such a word as "talented" it .is proper to avoid : 
first, because it is not wanted; secondly, because you 
never hear it from those who speak very good English. 
But the word "shirk" as applied to military duty is a 
word which every body uses; which is the word, and the 
only word, for the thing; which in every regiment and 
in every ship belonging to our country is employed ten 
times a day; which the Duke of Wellington, or Admiral 
Stopford, would use in reprimanding an officer. To in- 
terdict it, therefore, in what is meant to be familiar, and 
almost jocose, narrative seems to me rather rigid. 

But I will not go on. I will only repeat that I am 
truly grateful for your advice, and that if you will, on 
future occasions, mark with an asterisk any words in my 



258 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN [^t. 44 

proof-sheets which y 
to meet your wishes 
expense of my own. 



proof-sheets which you think open to objection, I will try 
to meet your wishes, though it may sometimes be at the 



Ever yours most truly, 

T. B. Macaulay. 



[^t. 44] JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 
1801-1890 

To J. B. MOZLEY 

["complicated distress"] 

Littlemore: April 2, 1845. 

I have just been looking at your article in the "C. R.," 
and it has touched me exceedingly. I knew you loved 
me, as I do you, but I was not prepared for what you 
say; and now, as is the law of such things, I know it just 
when I am losing it. You speak as if writing a funeral 
oration, and so it is. Yet sometimes I think, so it shall 
not be — for surely I am now more cut oif from you than 
I can be in any other circumstances, and when the dread- 
ful trials of the next few years are over I may have the 
opportunity, if we both live, of something more of in- 
timacy with you than I can have now. 

Alas ! I do not forget how changeable all things . are, 
and how difficult it is for minds to keep pace with each 
other which walk apart. You may fancy how all this 
oppresses me. All that is dear to me is being taken from 
me. My days are gone like a shadow, and I am withered 
like grass. 

I say to myself, if I am under a delusion, what have 
I done, what grave sin have I committed, to bring such a 
judgment on me? O that it may be revealed to me, and 
the delusion broken ! But I go on month after month, 
year after year, without change of feeling except in one 
direction; not floating up and down, but driving one way. 

I know well, my dear James, that you do not forget to 
think of me at solemn times, but I really think that now 
the time is short. I cannot promise myself to remain 
as I am after Christmas, perhaps not so long, though I 
suppose in the event I shall linger on some little while 



^t. 77] JOHN HENKY NEWMAN 259 

longer. By November I expect to have resigned my Fel- 
lowship, and perhaps may publish something. 

I don't mind your telling this in confidence to anyone 
you please, but of course you will keep this letter safely. 
What complicated distress! I suppose it will be less 
when the worst is over. 

Ever yours most affectionately, 
John H. Newman. 
[^t. 44] 

To Mrs. J. Mozley* 

[becoming a ROMAN CATHOLIc] 

LiTTLEMORE, Octobcr 8, 1845. 
My dear Jemima, — 

I must tell you what will pain you greatly, but I will 
make it as short as you would wish me to do. 

This night Father Dominic, the Passionist, sleeps here. 
He does not know of my intention, but I shall ask him 
to receive me into what I believe to be the One Fold of 
the Redeemer. 

This will not go till all is over. 

Ever yours affectionately, 

John H. Newman. 
[^t. 77] 

To Dr. Greenhill 
["a statute of limitation"] 

January 18, 1879. 
My dear Dr. Greenhill, — 

You flatter me by your question ;t but I think it was 
Keble who, when asked it in his own case, answered that 
poets were not bound to be critics, or to give a sense to 
what they had written; and though I am not, like him, 
a poet, at least I may plead that I am not bound to re- 
member my own meaning, whatever it was, at the end of 
almost fifty years. Anyhow, there must be a statute of 
limitation for writers of verse, as it would be quite a 
tyranny if, in an art which is the expression, not of 
truth, but of imagination and sentiment, one were obliged 
to be ready for examination on the transient states of 

* His sister. 

t As to the meaning of the last two lines of "Lead, Kindly Light." 



260 RALPH WALDO EMERSON [Mt. 9 

mind which came upon one when homesick or seasick, or 
in any other way sensitive or excited. . . . 

Yours most truly, 
John H. Newman. 



[^t. 9] RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
1803-1882 
To His Aunt^ Mary Moody Emerson 
[a boy^s day] 

Boston, April 16, 1813. 
Dear Aunt, — 

I am much obliged to you for your kind letter. I mean 
now to give you an account of what I do commonly in 
one day, if that is what you meant by giving an account 
of one single day in my life. Friday, 9th, I choose for 
the day of telling what I did. In the Morning I rose, as 
I commonly do, about five minutes before six. I then 
help Wm. in making the fire, after which I set the table 
for Prayers. I then call mamma about quarter after six. 
We spell as we did before you went away. I confess I 
often feel an angry passion start in one corner of my 
heart when one of my Brothers gets above me, which I 
think sometimes they do by unfair means, after which 
we eat our breakfast; then I have from about quarter 
after seven till eight to play or read. I think I am rather 
inclined to the former. I then go to school, where I hope 
I can say I study more than I did a little while ago. I 
am in another book called Virgil, and our class are even 
with another which came to the Latin School one year 
before us. After attending this school I go to Mr. Webb's 
private school, where I write and cipher. I go to this 
place at eleven and stay till one o'clock. After this, when 
I come home I eat my dinner, and at two o'clock I re- 
sume my studies at the Latin School, where I do the 
same except in studying grammar. After I come home 
I do mamma her little errands if she has any; then I 
bring in my wood to supply the breakfast room. I then 
have some time to play and eat my supper. After that 
we say our hymns or chapters, and then take our turns 
in reading Rollin, as we did before you went. We retire 



^t. 34] RALPH WALDO EMERSON 261 

to bed at different times. I go at a little after eight, and 
retire to my private devotions, and then close my eyes in 
sleep, and there ends the toils of the day. . . .1 have 
sent a letter to you in a Packet bound to Portland, which 
I suppose you have not received, as you made no mention 
of it in your letter to mamma. Give my love to Aunt 
Haskins and Aunt Ripley, with Robert and Charles and 
all my cousins, and I hope you will send me an answer 
to this the first opportunity, and believe me, I remain 
your most dutiful Nephew, 

R. Waldo Emerson; 



[.Et. 34] 

To Carlyle 
[sterling; "the French revolution" in America] 

Concord, 9 February, 1838. 
My dear Friend, — 

It is ten days now — ten cold days — that your last letter 
has kept my heart warm, and I have not been able to 
write you before. I have just finished — Wednesday even- 
ing — a course of lectures which I ambitiously baptized 
"Human Culture," and read once a week to the curious 
in Boston. I could write nothing else the while, for 
weariness of the week's stated scribbling. Now I am free 
as a wood-bird, and can take up the pen without fretting 
or fear. Your letter* should, and nearly did, make me 
jump for joy, — fine things about our poor speech at Cam- 
bridge, — fine things from CARLYLE. Scarcely could we 
maintain a decorous gravity on the occasion. And then 
news of a friend, who is also Carlyle's friend. What has 
life better to offer than such tidings? You may suppose 
I went directly and got me Blackwood, and read the prose 
and the verse of John Sterling, and saw that my man 
had a head nnd a heart, and spent an hour or two very 
happily in spelling his biography out of his own hand; — 
a species of palmistry in which I have a perfect reliance. 
I found many incidents grave and gay and beautiful, 
and have determined to love him very much. In this 
romancing of the gentle affections we are children ever- 

* For Carlyle's letter see p. 228. 



262 KALPH WALDO EMEKSON [^Et. 34 

more. We forget the age of life, the barriers so thin and 
yet so adamantean of space and circumstance; and I have 
had the rarest poems self-singing in my head of brave 
men that work and conspire in a perfect intelligence 
across seas and conditions — and meet at last. I heartily 
pray that the Sea and its vineyards may cheer with warm 
medicinal breath a Voyager so kind and noble. 

Eor the Oration, I am so elated with your good will 
that I begin to fear your heart has betrayed your head 
this time, and so the praise is not good on Parnassus but 
only in friendship. I sent it diffidently (I did send it 
through bookselling Munroe) to you, and was not a lit- 
tle surprised by your generous commendations. Yet here 
it interested young men a good deal for an academical 
performance, and an edition of five hundred was disposed 
of in a month. A new edition is now printing, and I 
will send you some copies presently to give to anybody 
who you think will read. 

I have a little budget of news myself. I hope you had 
my letter — sent by young Sumner — saying that we meant 
to print the French Revolution here for the Author's 
benefit. It was published on the 25th of December. It 
is published at my risk, the booksellers agreeing to let 
me have at cost all the copies I can get subscriptions for. 
All the rest they are to sell and to have twenty per cent 
on the retail price for their commission. The selling price 
of the book is $2.50; the cost of a copy, $1.26; the book- 
sePer's commission, 50 cts. ; so that T. C. only gains 74 
cts. on each copy they sell. But we have two hundred 
subscribers, and on each copy they buy you have $1.26, 
except in cases where the distant residence of subscribers 
makes a cost of freight. You ought to have three or 
four quarters of a dollar more on each copy, but we put 
the lowest price on the book in terror of the Philistines, 
and to secure its accessibleness to the economical Public. 
We printed one thousand copies: of these, five hundred 
are already sold, in six weeks; and Brown the bookseller 
talks, as I think, much too modestly, of getting rid of 
the whole edition in one year. I say six months. The 
printing, &c., is to be paid and a settlement made in six 
months from the day of publication; and I hope that the 
settlement will be the final one. And I confide in send- 



/E.. a^J KALPH WALDO EMEKSON 263 

ing you seven hundred dollars at least, as a certificate 
that you have so many readers in the West. Yet, I own, 
I shake a little at the thought of the bookseller's account. 
Whenever I have seen that species of document, it was 
strange how the hopefulest ideal dwindled away to a 
dwarfish actual. But you may be assured I shall on this 
occasion summon to the bargain all the Yankee in my 
constitution, and multiply and divide like a lion. 

The book has the best success with the best. Young 
men say it is the only history they have ever read. The 
middle-aged and the old shake their heads, and cannot 
make anything of it. In short, it has the success of a 
book which, as people have not fashioned, has to fashion 
the people. It will take some time to win all, but it wins and 
will win. I sent a notice of it to the Christian Examiner, 
but the editor sent it all back to me except the first and 
last paragraphs; those he printed. And the editor of the 
North American declined giving a place to a paper from 
another friend of yours. But we shall see. I am glad 
you are to print your Miscellanies; but — forgive our 
Transatlantic effrontery — we are beforehand of you, and 
we are already selecting a couple of volumes from the 
same, and shall print them on the same plan as the His- 
tory, and hope so to turn a penny for our friend again. 
I surely should not do this thing without consulting you 
as to the selection but that I had no choice. If I waited, 
the bookseller would have done it himself, and carried 
off the profit. I sent you (to Kennet) a copy of the 
French Revolution. I regret exceedingly the printer's 
blunder about the numbering the Books in the volumes, 
but he had warranted me in a literal, punctual reprint 
of the copy without its leaving his office, and I trusted 
him. I am told there are many errors. I am going to 
see for myself. I have filled my paper, and not yet said 
a word of how many things. You tell me how ill was 
Mrs. C, and you do not tell me that she is well again. 
But I see plainly that I must take speedily another sheet. 
I love you always. 

R. W. Emerson. 



264 KALPH WALDO EMERSON [^t. 44 

[^t. 44] 

To His Wife 
[staying with the carlyles] 

Chelsea, Londox, October 27, 1847. 
Dear Lidian: 

... I found at Liverpool after a couple of days a 
letter which had been once there seeking me (and once 
returned to Manchester before it reached my hands) from 
Carlyle, addressed to "R. W. E., on the instant he lands 
in England," conveying so hearty a welcome and so urgent 
an invitation to house and hearth that I could no more 
resist than I could gravitation; and finding that I should 
not be wanted for a week in the lecture-rooms, I came 
hither on Monday, and, at ten at night, the door was 
opened to me by Jane Carlyle, and the man himself was 
behind her with a lamp in the entry. They were very 
little changed from their old selves of fourteen years ago 
(in August), when I left them at Craigenputtock. 

"Well," said Carlyle, "here we are, shovelled together 
again." The floodgates of his talk are quickly opened, 
and the river is a great and constant stream. We had 
large communication that night until nearly one o'clock, 
and at breakfast next morning it began again. At noon 
or later we went together, Carlyle and I, to Hyde Park 
and the palaces (about two miles from here), to the 
National Gallery, and to the Strand, — Carlyle melting 
all Westminster and London down into his talk and 
laughter as he walked. We came back to dinner at five 
or later; then Dr. Carlyle came in and spent the evening, 
which again was long by the clock, but had no other 
measures. Here in this house we breakfast about nine; 
Carlyle is very apt, his wife says, to sleep till ten or 
eleven, if he has no company. An immense talker he is, 
and altogether as extraordinary in his conversation as in 
his writing, — I think even more so. You will never dis- 
cover his real vigor and range, or how much more he 
might do than he has ever done, without seeing him. I 
find my few hours' discourse with him in Scotland, long 
since, gave me not enough knowledge of him, and I have 
now at last been taken by surprise. . . . Carlyle and 
his wife live on beautiful terms. Nothing can be more 



.Et. 44] RALPH WALDO EMERSON 265 

engaging than their ways, and in her bookcase all his 
books are inscribed to her, as they came, from year to 
year, each with some significant lines. 

But you will wish to hear, more of my adventures, which 
I must hasten to record. On Wednesday, at the National 
Gallery, Mrs. Bancroft greeted me with the greatest kind- 
ness, and insisted on presenting me to Mr. Rogers, who 
chanced to come into the gallery with ladies. Mr. Rogers 
invited me to breakfast, with Mrs. B., at his house on 
Friday. . . . The smoke of London, through which the 
sun rarely penetrates, gives a dusky magnificence to these 
immense piles of building in the west part of the city, 
which makes my walking rather dream-like. Martin's 
pictures of Babylon, etc., are faithful copies of the west 
part of London; light, darkness, architecture, and all. 
Friday morning at half past nine I presented myself at 
Mr. Bancroft's door, 90 Eaton Square, which was opened 
by Mr. Bancroft himself! in the midst of servants whom 
that man of eager manners thrust aside, saying he would 
open his own door for me. He was full of goodness and 
of talk. . . . Mrs. Bancroft appeared, and we rode in 
her carriage to Mr. Rogers' house. . . . Mr. Rogers re- 
ceived us with cold, quiet, indiscriminate politeness, and 
entertained us with abundance of anecdote, which Mrs. 
Bancroft very skilfully drew out of him, about people 
more or less interesting to me. Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, 
Wellington, Talleyrand, Mme. de Stael, Lafayette, Fox, 
Burke, and crowds of high men and women had talked 
and feasted in these rooms in which we sat, and which 
are decorated with every precious work. ... I think it 
must be the chief private show of London, this man's col- 
lection. But I will not bore you with any more particu- 
lars. From this house Mrs. Bancroft carried me to the 
cloister of Westminster Abbey and to the Abbey itself, 
and then insisted on completing her bounties by carrying 
me in her coach to Carlyle's door at Chelsea, a very long 
way. ... At five P.M. yesterday, after spending four 
complete days with my friends, I took the fast train for 
Liverpool, and came hither, 212 miles, in six hours ; which 
is nearly twice our railway speed. In Liverpool I drank 
tea last Saturday night with James Martineau, and heard 
him preach on Sunday night last. He is a sincere, sensi- 



266 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE [.Et. 36 

ble, good man, and though greatly valued as a preacher, 
yet I thought him superior to his books and his preach- 
ing. I have seen Mr. Ireland, also, at Manchester on my 
way to London, and his friends. It seems I am to read 
six lectures in this town in three weeks, and at the same 
time three lectures in each week in Manchester, on other 
evenings. When this service is ended I may have as many 
new engagements as I like, they tell me. I am to begin 
at Manchester next Tuesday evening. 

November 1, Tuesday evening. I am heartily tired of 
Liverpool. I am oppressed by the seeing of such multi- 
tudes: there is a fierce strength here in all the streets; 
the men are bigger and solider far than our people, more 
stocky, both men and women, and with a certain fixed- 
ness and determination in each person's air, that dis- 
criminates them from the sauntering gait and roving 
eyes of Americans. In America you catch the eye of 
•every one you meet; here you catch no eye, almost. The 
axes of an Englishman's eyes are united to his backbone. 
. . . Yesterday morning I got your welcome letter (by 
Mr. Ireland). I am greatly contented to know that all 
is so well with you. . . . 

Ever affectionately yours, 

Waldo E. 

[.Et. 36] NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 

1804-1864 

To HIS Sister 

[brook farm news] 

Brook Farm, West Roxbury, May 3, 1841. 

As the weather precludes all possibility of ploughing, 

hoeing, sowing, and other such operations, I bethink me 

that you may have no objections to hear something of 

my whereabout and whatabout. You are to know, then, 

that I took up my abode here on the 12th ultimo, in the 

midst of a snow-storm, which kept us all idle for a day 

or two. At the first glimpse of fair weather, Mr. Ripley 

summoned us into the cow-yard, and introduced me to 

an instrument with four prongs, commonly entitled a 

dung-fork. With this tool I have already assisted to 

load twenty or thirty carts of manure, and shall take 



^t. 36] NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 267 

part in loading nearly three hundred more. Besides, I 
have planted potatoes and pease, cut straw and hay for 
the cattle, and done various other mighty works. This 
very morning I milked three cows, and I milk two or 
three every night and morning. The weather has been 
so unfavorable that we have worked comparatively little 
in the fields; but, nevertheless, I have gained strength 
wonderfully, — grown quite a giant, in fact, — and can do 
a day's work without the slightest inconvenience. In 
short, I am transformed into a complete farmer. 

This is one of the most beautiful places I ever saw in 
my life, and as secluded as if it were a hundred miles 
from any city or village. There are woods, in which we 
can ramble all day without meeting anybody or scarcely 
seeing a house. Our house stands apart from the main 
road, so that we are not troubled even with passengers 
looking at us. Once in a while we have a transcendental 
visitor, such as Mr. Alcott; but generally we pass whole 
days without seeing a single face, save those of the 
brethren. The whole fraternity eat together; and such a 
delectable way of life has never been seen on earth since 
the days of the early Christians. We get up at half -past 
four, breakfast at half-past six, dine at half-past twelve, 
and go to bed at nine. 

The thin frock which you made for me is considered 
a most splendid article, and I should not wonder if it 
were to become the summer uniform of the Community. 
I have a thick frock, likewise; but it is rather deficient 
in grace, though extremely warm and comfortable. I 
wear a tremendous pair of cowhide boots, with soles two 
inches thick, — of course, when I come to see you I shall 
wear my farmer's dress. 

We shall be very much occupied during most of this 
month, ploughing and planting; so that I doubt whether 
you will see me for two or three weeks. You have the 
portrait by this time, I suppose; so you can very well 
dispense with the original. When you write to me (which 
I beg you will do soon), direct your letter to West Rox- 
bury, as there are two post-offices in the town. I would 
write more, but William Allen is going to the village, 
and must have this letter. So good-by. 

Nath. Hawthorne, Ploughman. 



268 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE [^t. 49 

[^t. 49] 

To G. S. HiLLARD 

["the miserable pinch is over"] 

Liverpool, Dec. 9, 1853. 
Dear Hillard, — 

I herewith send you a draft on Ticknor for the sum 
(with interest included) which was so kindly given me 
by unknown friends, through you, about four years ago. 

I have always hoped and intended to do this, from 
the first moment when I made up my mind to accept 
the money. It would not have been right to speak of 
this purpose before it was in my power to accomplish 
it; but it has never been out of my mind for a single 
day, nor hardly, I think, for a single working hour. I 
am most happy that this loan (as I may fairly call it, 
at this moment) can now be repaid without the risk 
on my part of leaving my wife and children utterly 
destitute. I should have done it sooner; but I felt that 
it would be selfish to purchase the great satisfaction for 
myself, at any fresh risk to them. We are not rich, 
nor are we ever likely to be; but the miserable pinch. 
is over. 

The friends who were so generous to me must not 
suppose that I have not felt deeply grateful, nor that 
my delight at relieving myself from this pecuniary obli- 
gation is of any ungracious kind. I have been grateful 
all along, and am more so now than ever. This act of 
kindness did me an unspeakable amount of good; for 
it came when I most needed to be assured that anybody 
thought it worth while to keep me from sinking. And 
it did me even greater good than this, in making me 
sensible of the need of sterner efforts than my former 
ones, in order to establish a right for myself to live 
and be comfortable. For it is my creed (and was so 
even at that wretched time) that a man has no claim 
upon his fellow-creatures, beyond bread and water, and 
a grave, unless he can win it by his own strength or 
skill. But so much the kinder were those unknown 
friends whom I thank again with all my heart. 



[^t.29] NATHANIEL PAKKEK WILLIS 

1806-1867 
To Miss Mitford 

["steeped to the lips in LONDON SOCIETY"] 

Athen^um, London^ April 22, 1835. 
My dear Miss Mitford, — 

I am anxious to see your play and your next book, 
and I quite agree with you that the drama is your pied, 
though I think laurels, and spreading ones, are sown 
for you in every department of writing. Nobody ever 
wrote better prose, and what could not the author of 
"Rienzi" do in verse? I should like to talk over this 
with you. 

Eor myself I am far from considering myself regu- 
larly embarked in literature, and if I can live without it, 
or ply any other vocation, shall vote it a thankless trade, 
and save my "entusymussy"* for my wife and children — 
when I get them. I am at present steeped to the lips 
in London society, going to everything, from Devon- 
shire House to a publisher's dinner in Paternoster Row, 
and it is not a bad olla podrida of life and manners. I 
dote on "England and true English," and was never so 
happy or so at a loss to find a minute for care or fore- 
thought. 

I really have ten thousand things I wish to write about 
or talk about to you; but a letter is a needle's point to 
dance upon, and I must keep all my flourishes till I see 
you. No letter is so small, however, that I cannot ex- 
press in it my happiness and pride in your friendship, 
and I beg you to believe, dear Miss Mitford, that your 
kindness is appreciated and your regard sought by no one 
more sensitively than, 

Faithfully and always yours, 

N. P. Willis. 

* Enthusiasm. 



L^t.25] JOHN STERLING 

1806-1844 
To HIS Mother 
[a hurricane in the west indies] 

Brighton, St. Vincent, 

28th August, 1831. 
My dear Mother, — ■ 

The packet came in yesterday; bringing me some 
Newspapers, a Letter from my Father, and one from 
Anthony, with a few lines from you. I wrote, some days 
ago, a hasty Note to my Father, on the chance of its 
reaching you through Grenada sooner than any com- 
munication by the packet; and in it I spoke of the great 
misfortune which had befallen this Island and Barbadoes, 
but from which all those you take an interest in have 
happily escaped unhurt. 

From the day of our arrival in the West Indies until 
Thursday the 11th instant, which will long be a memo- 
rable day with us, I had been doing my best to get our- 
selves established comfortably; and I had at last bought 
the materials for making some additions to the house. 
But on the morning I have mentioned, all that I had 
exerted myself to do, nearly all the property both of 
Susan and myself, and the very house we lived in, were 
suddenly destroyed by a visitation of Providence far 
more terrible than any I have ever witnessed. 

When Susan came from her room, to breakfast, at 
eight o'clock, I pointed out to her the extraordinary height 
and violence of the surf, and the singular appearance 
of the clouds of heavy rain sweeping down the valleys 
before us. At this time I had so little apprehension of 
what was coming, that I talked of riding down to the 
shore when the storm should abate, as I had never seen 
so fierce a sea. In about a quarter of an hour the House- 
Negroes came in, to close the outside shutters of the 
windows. They knew that the plantain-trees about the 
Negro houses had been blown down in the night; and 
had told the "maid-servant Tyrrell, but I had heard 
nothing of it. A very few minutes after the closing of 
the windows, I found that the shutters of Tyrrell's room, 
at the south and commonly the most sheltered end of 

270 



i 



^t. 25] JOHN STEELING 271 

the House, were giving way. I tried to tie them; but 
the silk handkerchief which I used soon gave way; and 
as I had neither hammer, boards, nor nails in the house, 
I could do nothing more to keep out the tempest. I 
found, in pushing at the leaf of the shutter, that the 
wind resisted, more as if it had been a stone wall or a 
mass of iron, than a mere current of air. There were 
one or two people outside trying to fasten the windows, 
and I went out to help; but we had no tools at hand: 
one man was blown down the hill in front of the house, 
before my face; and the other and myself had great 
difficulty in getting back again inside the door. The 
rain on my face and hands felt like so much small shot 
from a gun. There was great exertion necessary to shut 
the door of the house. 

The windows at the end of the large room were now 
giving way; and I suppose it was- about nine o'clock, 
when the hurricane burst them in, as if it had been a 
discharge from a battery of heavy cannon. The shutters 
were forced open, and the wind fastened them back to 
the wall; and then the panes of glass were smashed 
by the mere force of the gale, without anything having 
touched them. Even now I was not at all sure the 
house would go. My books, I saw, were lost; for the 
rain poured past the book-cases, as if it had been the 
Colonarie River. But we carried a good deal of furni- 
ture into the passage at the entrance; we sat Susan 
there on a sofa, and the Black Housekeeper was even 
attempting to get her some breakfast. The house, how- 
ever, began to shake so violently, and the rain was so 
searching, that she could not stay there long. She went 
into her own room; and I stayed to see what could 
be done. 

Under the fore part of the house, there are cellars 
built of stone, but not arched. To these, however, there 
was no access except on the outside; and I knew from 
my own experience that Susan could not have gone a 
step beyond the door, without being carried away by the 
storm, and probably killed on the spot. The only chance 
seemed to be that of breaking through the floor. But 
when the old Cook and myself resolved on this, we found 
that we had no instrument with which it would be pos- 



272 JOHN STERLING [^t. 25 

sible to do it. It was now clear that we had only God 
to trust in. The front windows were giving way with 
successive crashes, and the floor shook as you may have 
seen a carpet on a gusty day in London. I went into 
our bed-room; where I found Susan, Tyrrell, and a little 
Coloured girl of seven or eight years old; and told them 
that we should probably not be alive in half an hour. 
I could have escaped, if I had chosen to go alone, by 
crawling on the ground either into the kitchen, a sepa- 
rate stone building at no great distance, or into the open 
fields away from trees or houses; but Susan could not 
have gone a yard. She became quite calm when she 
knew the worst; and she sat on my knee in what seemed 
the safest corner of the room, while every blast was 
bringing nearer and nearer the moment of our seem- 
ingly certain destruction. 

The house was under two parallel roofs; and the one 
next the sea, which sheltered the other, and us who were 
under the other, went oif, I suppose about ten o'clock. 
. . . I was sitting in an arm-chair, holding my Wife; 
and Tyrrell and the little Black child were close to us. 
We had given up all notion of surviving; and only 
waited for the fall of the roof to perish together. 

Before long the roof went. Most of the materials, 
however, were carried clear away : one of the large couples 
was caught on the bed-post, , . . and held fast by the 
iron spike; while the end of it hung over our heads: had 
the beam fallen an inch on either side of the bed-post, 
it must necessarily have crushed us. The walls did not 
go with the roof; and we remained for half an hour, 
alternately praying to God, and watching them as they 
bent, creaked, and shivered before the storm. 

Tyrrell and the child, when the roof was off, made their 
way through the remains of the partition, to the outer 
door; and with the help of the people who were looking 
for us, got into the kitchen. A good while after they 
were gone, and before we knew anything of their fate, 
a Negro came suddenly upon us, and the sight of him 
gave us a hope of safety. When the people learned 
that we were in danger, and while their own huts were 
flying about their ears, they crowded to help us; and 
the old Cook urged them on to our rescue. He made 



Mt 32] HENRY \V. LONGFELLOW 273 

five attempts, after saving Tyrrell, to get to us; and 
four times he was blown down. The fifth time he, and 
the Negro we first saw, reached the house. The space 
they had to traverse was not above twenty yards of level 
ground, if so much. In another minute or two, the 
Overseers and a crowd of Negroes, most of whom had 
come on their hands and knees, were surrounding us; 
and with their help, Susan was carried round to the 
end of the house; where they broke-open the cellar win- 
dow, and placed her in comparative safety. The force 
of the hurricane was, by this time, a good deal dimin- 
ished, or it would have been impossible to stand be- 
fore it. 

But the wind was still terrific; and the rain poured 
into the cellars through the floor above. Susan, Tyrrell, 
and a crowd of Negroes remained under it, for more than 
two hours : and I was long afraid that the wet and cold 
would kill her, if she did not perish more violently. 
Happily we had wine and spirits at hand, and she was 
much nerved by a tumbler of claret. As soon as I 
saw her in comparative security, I went off with one of 
the Overseers down to the Works, where the greater 
number of the Negroes were collected, that we might 
see what could be done for them. They were wretched 
enough, but no one was hurt; and I ordered them a 
dram apiece, which seemed to give them a good deal of 
consolation. ... I am ever, dearest Mother, 

Your grateful and affectionate, 

John Sterling. 



[^t. 32] 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

1807-1882 

To George W. Green 

["hyperion"; doings of authors] 

July 23, 1839. 
Three pages of fault-finding you call a letter. I don't. 
Find fault to your heart's content; but be more con- 
centrated. There you are in Rome, with all the world 
marching and countermarching before you, and you have 



274 HENKY W. LONGFELLOW [^t. 32 

no more to say than if you were in East Greenwich. 
And when I want particulars about yourself, you laugh 
in my face, and then fill a whole page with broken 
columns, moonlight, and the Coliseum; as if I were a 
female cousin, and kept an album. This is not fair; I 
am regularly savage about it. Now having disgorged 
this crude mass, let us pass to more important matters. 
Is not Sumner a glorious youth? — with a halo round his 
head, as it were. His presence is beneficent, and we 
shall all await his return with fluttering impatience. A 
warm-hearted, manly fellow, and an ardent friend. I 
know you must have enjoyed his society. 

I have written a Romance during this past year. The 
feelings of the book are true; the events of the story 
mostly fictitious. The heroine, of course, bears a resem- 
blance to the lady, without being an exact portrait. 
There is no betrayal of confidence, no real scene de- 
scribed. Hyperion is the name of the book, not of, the 
hero. It merely indicates that here is the life of one 
who in his feelings and purposes is a "son of Heaven 
and Earth*" and who though obscured by clouds yet 
"moves on high." Further than this the name has noth- 
ing to do with the book, and in fact is mentioned only 
once in the course of it. I expect to be mightily abused. 
People will say that I am the hero of my own romance, 
and compare myself to the sun, to Hyperion Apollo. 
This is not so. I wish only to embody certain feelings 
which are mine, not to magnify myself. I do not care 
for abuse, if it is real, manly, hearty abuse. All that 
I fear is the laudatur et alget, the damnation of faint 
praise; that I hope to avoid, this time. 

. . . And now for American literature. Hillhouse is 
publishing a new edition of his poems. Prescott is 

writing a History of the Conquest of Mexico. has 

published a poem ( ? ) — most rabid trash, trash with a tin 
pail tied to its tail. Yet Willis says, "If God ever made 

a poet, it is ." Willis's A VAhri is a collection of 

letters written from his country-seat on the Susque- 
hanna, and published in the Mirror as "Letters from 
under a Bridge;" very racy and beautiful. Hillard has 
in the press a new and beautiful edition of Spenser, 
with preface and notes by himself. Felton is busily at 



.Et 33] HENEY W. LONGFELLOW 275 

work upon a translation of Menzel's German Literature. 
He is doing- it finely. New York is becoming more and 
more literary. It is also becoming a little less bigoted; 
Mr. Brooks, ci-devant Unitarian clergyman in Hingham, 
has been elected Professor of Botany in the New York 
L^niversity. Cooper, the novelist, is up to his arm-pits 
in law-suits, — libel cases against the editors of newspa- 
pers for abusing him. Decidedly a disagreeable indi- 
vidual! Bulwerism is dying out; Marryatism, ditto. 
Dickens reigns supreme as the popular writer. Bancroft 
has written a violent article against Goethe in the Chris- 
tian Examiner. Washington Irving is writing away in 
the Knickerbocker, — old remnants, odds and ends about 
Sleepy Hollow and Granada. What a pity! A Miss 
Fuller has published a translation of "flunky" Ecker- 
mann's Conversations with Goethe. Dr. Bird, a new 
novel. 



[iEt. 33 

To HIS Father 
[the brook farm experiment] 

October 18, 1840. 
Since I last wrote you, sundry novelties have appeared 
in this quarter of the world, which you may see hinted 
at in the papers. They are among the moral reforms 
of -the day ; and have at once something serious and some- 
thing comic about them. ■ You probably have heard of 
the Non-Eesistance Society in Boston, who wish to fol- 
low out literally the injunctions "If a man strike you 
on one cheek," and "If a man take away your cloak," 
etc. One of the chief men of this society is Mr. Ed- 
mund Quincy, second son of our President. They have 
now called a convention, inviting people of all creeds 
and denominations to attend, and discuss the great ques- 
tions, "What is the Church, the Sabbath, Eeligion ?" Not 
long ago there was a similar convention held in Groton. 
The first resolution was, "Voted, that we are not sec- 
tarian;" whereupon discussion arose as to what consti- 
tuted a sect; which discussion lasted for three days, 
when the convention adjourned. Not long after, came 



276 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW [^t. 42 

up from Cape Cod u new sect called the "Come-outers," 
who formed a holy alliance with the Transcendentalists. 
Out of this fermentation of mind has sprung up a 
new plan; namely, to form a community to be called 
"The Practical Christians." Each individual is to sub- 
scribe two hundred dollars, and each family one thou- 
sand; a farm is to be bought near Boston, cottages to be 
built, and then the community goes to work. Every 
member is to labor three hours a day; the remainder of 
the time is to be at his own disposal. There is no 
Jurther community of goods than this. The three hours' 
labor it is thought will feed, clothe, and lodge them all; 
and the rest of the time is to be devoted to the fine arts, 
music, literature, etc., etc. I hear that the Rev. George 
Ripley, Mr. Emerson, Miss Fuller, and other prominent 
Transcendentalists are going to this Land of Promise. 
Likewise Mr. Alcott, the author of "Orphic Sayings" in 
the Dial; though I fear he will be an unprofitable far- 
mer, for, being a great Grahamite, he refuses to put 
manure on the land he now cultivates in Concord, think- 
ing it too stimulating! What will be the final result of 
all these movements it is impossible to foresee; some 
good end, I trust, for they are sincere men, and have a 
good intent. 



[^Et. 42] 

To Charles Eliot Norton 

[news for INDIA FROM NEW ENGLAND] 

February 5, 1850. 
I have been thinking how very odd and outlandish 
anything written on the banks of Charles River must 
sound when read on the banks of the Ganges; and how 
small we must all appear to you who are personally ac- 
quainted with "the Boundless Krishna, the Valiant," and 
with the "Moonshees" who write his poems for him! A 
magnificent Oriental idea is that, — feebly put in practice 
in England by Day and Martin, and in New England 
by Simmons of Oak Hall. Yesterday afternoon I was 
at Shady Hill. Your father was below stairs in his 
study, a little pale from his late illness; and the whole 



^t. 52] HENRY W. LONGFELLOW 277 

scene wore its usual sunny, genial, happy aspect, — your 
portrait looking pensively from the wall toward the fire, 
as if "musing while it burned." Mr. Sparks was there; 
and we all talked of you and Ritchie, and walked awhile 
beside your palanquins. In the Craigie House is noth- 
ing new. Tom. Appleton is in England. [In Boston] 
Mrs. Eanny Kemble is reading Shakespeare. Charles 
Perkins gives matinees musicales at No. 1 Tremont Court, 
which are very pleasant. Mr. Ticknor's book [History 
of Spanish Literature] is a great success. Bowen is in 
very hot water for abusing the Magyars, in the North 
American, — and rather likes it. Politics are raging furi- 
ously, — the hot Southrons blustering as usual, but I trust 
to no effect. There is no danger of a dissolution of the 
Union. Therefore be not alarmed by what you read in 
the newspapers. 

And now, dear C, Namaraskam! Sasktangam! and 
whatever may be the Hindoo for "I love you." Salute 
for ^me the Sacred River, that "flows from the sweat of 
Siva's wife," — rather an uncomfortable companion, one 
would think, in a warm climate. Bring home the two 
great epics, — the Ramayana and the Mahahharata. You 
will regret it if you do not. Also, from Persia, Zoroas- 
ter's Zend A vest a. 



im. 52] 

To Emily A- 



[his children] 

Nahaxt, August 18, 1859. 

Your letter followed me down here by the seaside, 
where I am passing the summer with my three little 
girls. The oldest is about your age; but as little girls' 
ages keep changing every year, I can never remember 
exactly how old she is, and have to ask her mamma, 
who has a better memory than I have. Her name is 
Alice; I never forget that. She is a nice girl, and loves 
poetry almost as much as you do. 

The second is Edith, with blue eyes and beautiful 
golden locks which I sometimes call her "nankeen hair," 
to make her laugh. She is a very busy little woman, 
and wears gray boots. 



278 HENRY W. LONGFELLOW [.Et. 53 

The youngest is Allegra; which, you know, means 
merry ; and she is the merriest little thing you ever saw, 
—always singing and laughing all over the house. 

These are my three little girls, and Mr. Read has 
painted them all in one picture, which I hope you will 
see some day. They bathe in the sea, and dig in the 
sand, and patter about the piazza all day long, and some- 
times go to see .the Indians encamped on the shore, and 
buy baskets and bows and arrows. 

I do not say anything about the two boys. They are 
such noisy fellows it is of no use to talk about them. 

And now, dear Miss Emily, give my love to your papa, 
and good-night, with a kiss, from his friend and yours. 



[^t. 53] 

To James T. Fields 
[a folio from a lady] 

Cambridge, September 20, 1860. 
I have no end of poems sent me for "candid judg- 
ment" and opinion. Four are on hand at this moment. 
A large folio came last night from a lady. It has been 
chasing me round the country; has been in East Cam- 
bridge and in West Cambridge; and finally came by the 
hands of policeman Sanderson to my house. I wish he 
had "waived examination and committed it" — to mem- 
ory. What shall I do? These poems weaken me very 
much. It is like so much water added to the spirit 
of poetry. 

[^t. 53] 

To James T. Fields 
[an umbrella ior lending] 

March 3, 1863. 
I was ashamed this morning to send the expressman 
to your door in quest of an old umbrella, not unlike that 
which accompanied and consoled the exiled king of France 
in his flight to England. Nevertheless, I did send; for 
it is a lineal descendant of King Cotton, and is of that 



^t. 57] HEXKY W. LONGFELLOW 279 

particularly audacious kind that never says "Lost." In 
the hands of a modern "sensuous" poet the handle would 
become pearl (daughter, not mother of) and the rest 
would be of a "tissue from the looms of Samarcand." 
Finally, it is the one I keep to lend to lecturers at the 
Lowell Institute, and the like; and, though very dissi- 
pated, is worth reclaiming. 

Accept my apology and believe me, or not. 

Yours truly. 

[^t. 57] 

To George W. Greene 
[daxte's "ixferxo"] 

March 25, 1864. 
This is a lovely day, as you are well aware. More- 
over, it is Good Friday, as you are equally well aware; 
and leaving aside the deeper meaning of the day, I will 
tell you something of which I suspect you are not aware. 
Have you remembered, or noticed, that the days and 
dates of 1864 correspond with those of the Dantesque 
1300? — so that in both years Good Friday falls on the 
25th of March. Five hundred and sixty-four years ago 
to-day, Dante descended to the cittd dolente; and to-day, 
with the first two cantos of the Inferno in my hand, I 
descended among the printers' devils, — the maleholge of 
the University Press. Is it a good omen? I know not. 
But something urges me on and on and on with this 
work, and will not let me rest; though I often hear the 
warning voice from within, — 

Me degno a cio ne io ne altri crede. 

Did you ever notice the beautiful and endless aspiration 
so artistically and silently suggested by Dante in closing 
each part of his poem with the word stelle? Did any 
Italian commentator ever find it out? Among English 
translators, I belie\e Cayley was the first to remark it. 



[^t. 58] JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

1807-1892 

To Lucy Larcom 

[declixixg ax ixvitatiox] 

25th 3d mo., 1866. 
Believe me, Lucy Larcom, it gives me real sorrow 
That I cannot take my carpet-bag and go to town to- 
morrow ; 
But I'm "snow-bound," and cold on cold like layers of 

an onion 
Have piled my back and weighed me down as with the 

pack of Bunyan. 
The northeas't wind is damper and the northwest wind 

is colder, 
Or else the matter simply is that I am growing older. 
And then I dare not trust a moon seen over one's left 

shoulder. 
As I saw this with slender horns caught in a west hill 

pine, 
As on. a Stamboul minaret curves the arch-impostor's 

sign,— 
So I must stay in Amesbury, and let you go your way. 
And guess what colors greet your eyes, what shapes j'-our 

steps delay; 
What pictured forms of heathen lore, of god and goddess 

please you, 
What idol graven 'images you bend your wicked knees to. 
But why should I of evil dream, well knowing at your 

head goes, 
That flower of Christian womanhood, our dear good Anna 

Meadows. 
She'll be discreet, I'm sure, although once in a freak 

romantic 
She flung the Doge's bridal ring and married "The 

Atlantic." 
And, spite of all appearances, like the woman in a shoe 
She's got so many "Young Folks" now, she don't know 

what to do. 
But I must say I think it strange that thee and Mrs. 

Spaulding, 
Whose livcjs with Calvin's five-railed creed have been so 

tightly walled in, 

280 



.Et. 59] JOHN GKEENLEAF WHITTIEK 281 

Should quit your Puritan homes, and take the pains to go 
So far, with malice aforethought, to ''walk in a vain 

show!" 
Did Emmons hunt for pictures? Was Jonathan Ed- 
wards peeping 
Into the chambers of imagery with maids for Thormuz 

weeping ? 
Ah well! the times are sadly changed, and I myself am 

feeling 
The wicked world my Quaker coat from off my shoulders 

peeling. 
God grant that in the strange new sea of change wherein 

we swim. 
We still may keep the good old plank, of simple faith 

in Him! 



[.Et. 59] To James T. Fields 

["snow-bound"] 

[1866?] 
I thank thee for looking over my poem. I have acted 
as well as I could on thy hints, but I have left one 
"bad rhyme," heard and word, to preserve my well-known 
character in that respect. I don't know about the por- 
trait. At first thought, it strikes me that it would be 
rather out of place at the head of a new venture in 
rhyme. I don't want to run the risk of being laughed 
at. However, do as thee likes about it. Put thyself in 
the place of Mrs. Grundy, and see if it will be safe for 
any "counterfeit presentment" to brave the old lady's 
criticism. I think I have not injured the piece by my 
alterations, — that on the second page of the proof is 
rather improved than otherwise; and I have added two 
lines to my slightly lacl-adccisical reference to the boys 
and girls, in road-breaking. Don't send the poem to 
me again. I shall tear it all to pieces with alterations, 
if thee do. In the picture of the old home, the rim of 
hemlocks, etc., at the foot of the high hill which rises 
abruptly to the left, is not seen. They would make a 
far better snow picture than the oaks which are in the 
view. Don't put the poem on tinted or fancy paper. 
Let it be white as the snow it tells of. 



282 JOHX GREENLEAF WHITTIER [.Et. 77 

[.Et. 77] 

To Annie Fields 
[''the survivoks of a lost crew"] 

• 10th mo., 2, 1885. 
I have been thinking of thy gracious and generous 
proposal of hospitality. It has made me very happy, 
though I have not been able to see how I can avail 
myself of it. I find that I am unable to bear the ex- 
citement of city life for any length of time, however 
carefully I may be shielded by my friends. I am un- 
happily notorious, and cannot hide myself. My deafness 
makes me confused and uncomfortable when strangers 
are present. The great and really painful effort I am 
compelled to make when in company, to listen and try 
to understand, and make fitting replies, and the uncer- 
tainty I feel, when I venture to speak, whether I have 
heard aright — all this affects my nerves, and costs me 
nights of sleeplessness and days of weariness. In fact 
I am what the Turks call "a cut-off one," so far as society 
is concerned. ... As soon as it is known that I am in 
your premises a steady stream of interviewers, autograph- 
hunters, and people with missions will flow in upon you. 
It would be like having a waif from Barnum's Museum 
shut up in your library, and people coming in to see 
what it looks like. It would make your life miserable. 
Sarah's dog could not keep them off. You would have 
to get out a writ of ejectment and set me and my carpet- 
bag into the street — and yet how I wish I could say 
"yes"! I thank the good Providence that has given me 
such a friend, dear as Vittoria Colonna to Michael An- 
gelo. I wish I could look forward to the enjoyment of 
such friendship for many years in this life, but when 
one is approaching fourscore that is not to .be expected. 
Though for that matter, I see that Senator Hoar, in his 
great speech of day before yesterday at Springfield, took 
occasion to deny the self-evident fact that I am an old 
man ! . . . I had a rare good visit from Dr. Holmes and 
his wife the other day. We two old boys wandered about 
in the woods, talking of many things — half merry, half 
sad. We were stranded mariners, the survivors of a 
lost crew, warming ourselves at a fire kindled from the 



.Et. 34] EDGAK ALLAN POE 283 

wreck of our vessel. . . . The woods here are blazing 
with color, but I fail to see the reel against the green. 
Both look the same. But the walnuts and maples are 
glorious, making sunshine when there is none in the 
heavens. 

[.Et.34] EDGAR ALLAN POE 

1809-1849 
To F. W. Thomas and J. E. Dow 

["'SPREEING UPON AX EXTENSIVE SCALe"] 

Philadelphia, March 16, 1843, 
My dear Thomas and Dow, — 

I arrived here in perfect safety, and sober, about half- 
past four last evening — nothing occurring on the road 
of any consequence. I shaved and breakfasted in Balti- 
more, and lunched on the Susquehanna, and by the time 
I got to Philadelphia felt quite decent. Mrs. Clemm* 
was expecting me at the car-office. I went immediately 
home, took a warm bath and supper, and then went to 
Clarke's. I never saw a man in my life more surprised 
to see another. He thought by Dow's epistle that I 
must not only be dead but buried, and would as soon 
have thought of seeing his great-great-great-grandraother. 
He received me, therefore, very cordially, and made light 
of the matter. I told him what had been agreed upon — 
that I was a little sick, and that Dow, knowing I had 
been, in times past, given to spreeing upon an extensive 
scale, had become unduly alarmed, &c., &c. — that when I 
found he had w^ritten, I thought it best to come home. 
He said my trip had improved me, and that he had never 
seen me lool-ing so luell! — and I don't believe I ever did. 
This morning I took medicine, and, as it is a snowy day 
will avail myself of the excuse to stay at home — so that 
by to-morrow I shall be really as well as ever. Vir- 
ginia's t health is about the same ; but her distress of 
mind had been even more than I had anticipated. She 
desires her kindest remembrances to both of you — as also 
does Mrs. C. 

Clarke, it appears, wrote to Dow, who must have re- 

* ^Irs. Foe's mother. t Foe's wife. 



284 EDGAE ALLAN POE [^t. 34 

ceived the letter this morning. Please reenclose the letter 
to me, here, so that I may know how to guide myself. 
And, Thomas, do write immediately as proposed. If 
possible, enclose a line from Rob Tyler — but I fear un- 
der the circumstances, it is not so. I blame no one 
but myself. 

The letter which I looked for, and which I wished 
returned, is not on its way — reason, no money forth- 
coming — Lowell had not yet sent it. He is ill in New 
York, of ophthalmia. Immediately upon receipt of it, 
or before, I will forward the money you were both so 
kind as to lend, which is eight to Dow, and three and a 
half to Thomas. What a confounded business I have 
got myself into, attempting to write a letter to two 
people at once ! 

However, this is for Dow. My dear fellow, thank you 
a thousand times for your kindness and great forbear- 
ance, and don't say a word about the cloak turned inside 
out, or other peccadilloes of that nature. Also, express 
to your wife my deep regret for the vexation I must 
have occasioned her. Send me, also, if you can, the 
letter to Blythe. Call, also, at the barber's shop just 
above Fuller's and pay for me a levy which I believe I 
owe. And now, God bless you, for a nobler fellow never 
lived. 

And this is for Thomas. My dear friend, forgive me 
my petulance and don't believe I think all I said. Be- 
lieve me, I am very grateful to you for your m.any at- 
tentions and forbearances, and the time will never come 
when I shall forget either them or you. Remember me 
most kindly to Dr. Lacey — also to the Don, whose mus- 
tachios I do admire after all, and who has about the 
finest figure I ever beheld — also to Dr. Frailey. Please 
express my regret to Mr. Fuller for making such a fool 
of myself in his house, and say to him (if you think it 
necessary) that I should not have got half so drunk on 
his_ excellent port wine but for the rummy coffee with 
which I was forced to wash it down. I would be glad, 
too, if you would take an opportunity of saying to Mr, 
Rob Tyler that if he can look over matters and get me 
the inspectorship, I will join the Washingtonians forth- 
with. I am as serious as a judge — and much [more] so 



^t 34] EDGAE ALLAN POE 285 

than many. I think it would be a feather in Mr. Tyler's 
cap to save from the perils of mint julep — and "Port 
wines" — a young man of whom all the world thinks so 
well and who thinks so remarkably well of himself. 

And now, my dear friends, good-by, and believe me 
most truly yours, 

Edgar A. Poe. 

[^t. 34] 

To James Russell Lowell 
[long poems prosaic] 

Philadelphl\, October 19, 1843. 
My dear Friend, — 

I was upon the point of fulfilling a long neglected duty 
and replying to Mr. Carter's letter, enclosing $5, when 
I received yours of the 13th, remitting $5 more. JBelieve 
me I am sincerely grateful to you both for your uniform 
kindness and consideration. 

You say nothing of your health — but Mr. C. speaks of 
its perfect restoration, and I see, by your very MS., that 
you are well again, body and mind. I need not say that 
I am rejoiced at this — for you must know and feel that 
I am. When I thought of the possible loss of your eye- 
sight, I grieved as if some dreadful misfortune were 
about happening to myself. 

I shall look with much anxiety for your promised vol- 
ume. Will it include your "Year's Life," and other 
poems already published? I hope that it may; for these 
have not yet been fairly placed before the eye of the 
world. I am seeking an opportunity to do you justice 
in a review, and may find it in "Graham," when your 
book appears. No poet in America has done so much. 
I have maintained this upon all occasions. Mr. Long- 
fellow has genius, but by no means equals you in the 
true spirit. He is moreover so prone to imitation that I 
know not how to understand him at times. I am in 
doubt whether lie should not be termed an arrant plagi- 
arist. You have read his "Spanish Student?" I have 
written quite a long notice of it for Graham's December 
number. The play is a poor composition, with some fine 
poetical passages. His "Hymn to th^i Night," with some 
strange blemishes, is glorious. — How much I should like 



286 EDGAR ALLAX POE ' [.Et. 34 

to interchange opinions with you upon poems and poets 
in general! I fancy that we should agree, usually, in 
results, while dilTering, frequently, about principles. The 
day may come when we can discuss everything at leisure, 
in person. 

You say that your long poem has taught you a useful 
lesson, — ''that you are unfit to write narrative — unless in 
a dramatic form." It is not you that are unfit for the 
task — but the task for you — for any poet. Poetry must 
eschew narrative — except, as you say, dramatically. I 
mean to say that the true poetry — the highest poetry — 
must eschew it. The Iliad is not the highest. The con- 
necting links of a narrative — the frequent passages which 
have to serve the purpose of binding together the parts 
of the story, are necessarily prose, from their very ex- 
planatory nature. To color them — to gloss over their 
prosaic nature — (for this is the most which can be done) 
requires great skill. Thus Byron, who was no artist, is 
always driven, in his narrative, to fragmentary passages, 
eked out with asterisks. Moore succeeds better than any 
one. His "Alciphron" is wonderful in the force, grace, 
and nature of its purely narrative passages : — but pardon 
me for prosing. 

I send you the paper with my life and portrait. The 
former is true in general — the latter particularly false. 
It does not convey the faintest idea of my person. No 
one of my family recognized it. But this is a. point of 
little importance. You will see, upon the back of the 
biography, an announcement that I wms to assume the 
editorship of the "Museum." This was unauthorized. I 
never did edit it. The review of "Graham's Magazine" 
was written by H. B. Hirst — a young poet of this city. 
Who is to write your life for "Graham"? It is a pity 
that so many of these biographies w^ere entrusted to Mr. 
Griswold. He certainly lacks independence, or judgment, 
or both. 

I have tried in vain to get a copy of your "Year's Life" 
in Philadelphia. If you have one, and could spare it, I 
would be much obliged. 

Do write me again when you have leisure, and believe me. 
Your most sincere friend, 

Edgar A. Poe. 



.Et. 35] EDGAR ALLAN POE 287 

[xEt. 35] 

To Mrs. Clemm 
[arrival in xew York] 

New York, Sunday Morning, 
April 7, just after breakfast, [1844.] 
My dear Muddy, — 

We have just this rhinute done breakfast, and I now 
sit down to write you about everything. I can't pay for 
the letter, because the P. 0. won't be open to-day. In 
the first place we arrived safe at Walnut St. wharf. The 
driver wanted to make me pay a dollar, but I wouldn't. 
Then I had to pay a boy a levy to put the trunks in the 
baggage car. In the meantime I took Sis [Virginia] in 
the Depot Hotel. It was only a quarter past six, and we 
had to wait till seven. We saw the "Ledger" and "Times" 
— nothing in either — a few words of no account in the 
"Chronicle." We started in good spirits, but did not get 
here until nearly three o'clock. We went in the cars to 
Amboy, about forty miles from N. York, and then took 
the steamboat the rest of the way. Sissy coughed none 
at all. When we got to the wharf it was raining hard. 
I left her on board the boat, after putting the trunks in 
the Ladies' cabin, and set off to buy an umbrella and look 
for a boarding-house. I met a man selling umbrellas, 
and bought one for twenty-five cents. Then I went up 
Greenwich St. and soon found a boarding-house. It is 
just before you get to Cedar St., on the west side going 
up — the left-hand side. It has brown stone steps, with 
a porch with brown pillars. "Morrison" is the name on 
the door. I made a bargain in a few minutes and then 
got a hack and went for Sis. I was not gone more than 
half an hour, and she was quite astonished to see me 
back so soon. She didn't expect me for an hour. There 
were two other ladies waiting on board — ^so she wasn't 
very lonely. When we got to the house we had to wait 
about half an hour before the room was ready. The 
house is old and looks buggy. [The letter is cut here for 
the signature on the other side.] the cheapest board I 
ever knew, taking into consideration the central situa- 
tion and the living. 1 wish Kate [Catterina, the cat] 
could see it — she would faint. Last night, for supper, 



288 EDGAK ALLAN POE [.Et. 35 

we had the nicest tea you ever drank, strong and hot, — 
wheat bread and rye bread — cheese — tea — cakes (elegant), 
a great dish (two dishes) of elegant ham, and two of cold 
veal, piled up like a mountain and large slices — three 
dishes of the cakes and everything in the greatest pro- 
fusion. No fear of starving here. The landlady seemed 
as if she couldn't press us enough, and we were at home 
directly. Her husband is living with her — a fat, good- 
natured old soul. There are eight or ten boarders — two 
or three of them ladies — two servants. For breakfast we 
had excellent-flavored coffee, hot and strong — not very 
clear and no great deal of cream — veal cutlets, elegant 
ham and eggs and nice bread and butter. I never sat 
down to a more plentiful or a nicer breakfast. I wish 
you could have seen the eggs — and the great dishes of 
meat. I ate the first hearty breakfast I have eaten since 
I left our little home. Sis is delighted, and we are both 
in excellent spirits. She has coughed hardly any and 
had no night sweat. She is now busy mending my pants 
which I tore against a nail. I went out last night and 
bought a skein of silk, a skein of thread, two buttons, a 
pair of slippers, and a tin pan for the stove. The fire 
kept in all night. We have now got four dollars and a 
half left. To-morrow I am going to try and borrow three 
dollars, so that I may have a fortnight to go upon. I 
feel in excellent spirits, and haven't drank a drop — so 
that I hope soon to get out of trouble. The very instant 
I scrape together enough money I will send it on. You 
can't imagine how much we both do miss you. Sissy 
had a hearty cry last night, because you and Catterina 
weren't here. We are resolved to get two rooms the first 
moment we can. In the meantime it is impossible we 
could be more comfortable or more at home than we are. 
It looks as if it were going to clear up now. Be sure and 
go to the P. O. and have my letters forwarded. As soon 
as I write Lowell's article, I will send it to you, and get 
you to get the money from Graham. Give our best love 
to C. 

[Signature cut out.] 

Be sure and take home the "Messenger" to Hirst. We 
hope to send for you very soon. 



[^t. 53] ABKAHAM LINCOLISr 

1809-1865 
To General Hooker 

["what I NOW ASK OF YOU IS MILITARY SUCCESS"] 

Executive Mansion^ Washington, D. C, 
January 26, 1863. 
Major-General Hooher. 

General: I have placed you at the head of the Army 
of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what 
appear to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it 
best for you to know that there are some things in re- 
gard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I be- 
lieve you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which of course 
I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your 
profession, in which you are right. You have confidence 
in yourself, which is a valuable if not an indispensable 
quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable 
bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that 
during General Burnside's command of the army you 
have taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted him 
as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong 
to the country and. to a most meritorious and honorable 
brother officer. I have heard, in such a way as to be- 
lieve it, of your recently saying that both the army and 
the government needed a dictator. Of course it was not 
for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the 
command. Only those generals ' who gain successes can 
set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military suc- 
cess, and I will risk the dictatorship. The government 
will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is 
neither more nor less than it has done and will do for 
all commanders. I much fear that the spirit whi^h you 
have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their 
commander and withholding confidence from him, will 
now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can 
to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were 
alive again, could get any good out of an army while 
such a spirit prevails in it; and now beware of rashness. 
Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigil- 
ance go forward and give us victories. Yours very truly, 

A. Lincoln. 
289 



290 ABRAHAM LINCOLN [^t. 55 

[.Et. 55] To General U. S. Grant 

[expression of confidence] 

Executive Mansion, Washington, 
April 30, 1864. 
Lieutenant- General Grant : 

Not expecting to see you again before the spring cam- 
paign opens, I wish to express in this way my entire sat- 
isfaction with what you have done up to this time, so 
far as I understand it. The particulars of your plans I 
neither know nor seek to know. You are vigilant and 
self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to ob- 
trude any constraints or restraints upon you. While I 
am very anxious that any great disaster or capture of 
our men in great numbers shall be avoided, I know these 
points are less likely to escape your attention than they 
would be mine. If there is anything wanting which is 
within my power to give, do not fail to let me know it. 
And now, with a brave army and a just cause, may God 
sustain you. Yours very truly, 

A. Lincoln. 
[.Et. 55] To Mrs. Bixby 

[''the thanks of the republic"] 

Executive Mansion, Washington, 
November 21, 1864. 
Mrs. Bixhy, Boston, Massachusetts. 

Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the 
War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of 
Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who 
have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how 
weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which 
should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so 
overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you 
the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the 
republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly 
Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, 
and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved 
and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have 
laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. 
Yours very sincerely and respectfully, 
Abraham Lincoln. 



r.'Et. 25] EDWARD FITZGERALD 

1809-1883 
To W. B. Donne 

[SHAKESPEARE; LIFE OF COLERIDGe] 

[London^ 17 Gloucester Street, Queen Square] 

1834. 
Dear Donne, 

... I have been buying two Shakespeares, a second 
and third Folio — the second Folio pleases me much : and 
I can read him with a greater zest now. One had need 
of a big book to remember him by: for he is lost to the 
theatre: I saw Mr. Yandenhoff play Macbeth in a sad 
way a few nights ago : and such a set of dirty ragamuffins 
as the rest were could not disgrace any country barn. 
Manfred I have missed by some chance : and I believe "it 
was all for the best" as pious people say. The Theatre 
is bare beyond anything I ever saw : and one begins to 
hope that it has touched the bottom of its badness, and 
will rise again. I was looking the other day at Sir W. 
Davenant's alteration of Macbeth : who dies, saying, 
"Farewell, A^ain world: and that which is vainest in't, 
Ambition !" 

Edgeworth* whom I think you remember at Cambridge, 
is come to live in town: and I see him often at the Mu- 
seum. The want of books chiefly drove him from Italy: 
besides that he tells me he likes a constant change of 
scenes and ideas, and would be always about if he could. 
He is a very original man I think, and throws out much 
io be chewed and digested: but he is deficient in some 
elements that must combine to govern my love and ad- 
miration. He has much imagination of head, but none 
of heart: perhaps these are absurd distinctions: but I am 
no hand at these definitions. His great study is meta- 
physics : and Kant is his idol. He is x-ather without com- 
pany in London, and I wish much to introduce him to 
such men as I know: but most of your Apostolic party 
who could best exchange ideas with him are not in town. 
He is full of his subjects, and only wants opponents to 
tilt at. . . . 

The life of Coleridge is indeed an unsatisfactory thing: 
I believe that everybody thinks so. You seem to think that 

291 



292 EDWAKD FITZGEKALD [^t. 26 

it is purposely unsatisfactory, or rather dissatisfactory: 
but it seems to me to proceed from a kind of enervation 
in De Quincey. However, I don't know how he supports 
himself in other writings. . . . 

To fill up my letter I send you a sonnet of C. Lamb's, 
out of his Album Verses — ^please to like it — "Leisure.'' 



[^t. 26] 

To John Allen 

[TENNYSON AT AMBLESIDE; OLD DIVINES] 

Manchester, May 23, 1835. 
Dear Allen, 

I think that the fatal two months have elapsed, by 
which a letter shall become due to me from you. Ask 
Mrs. Allen if this is not so. Mind, I don't speak this 
upbraidingly, because I know that you didn't know where 
I was. I will tell you all about this by degrees. In the 
first place, I stayed at Mirehouse till the beginning of 
May, and then, going homeward, spent a week at Amble- 
side, which, perhaps you don't know, is on the shore of 
Winandermere. It was very pleasant there : though it 
was to be wished that the weather had been a little bet- 
.ter. I have scarce done anything since I saw you but 
abuse the weather : ' but these four last days have made 
amends for all: and are, I hope, the beginning of sum- 
mer at last. Alfred Tennyson stayed with me at Amble- 
side: Spedding w^as forced to go home, till the last two 
days of my stay there. I will say no more of Tennyson 
than that the more I have seen of him, the more cause 
I have to think him great. His little humours and 
grumpinesses were so droll, that I was always laughing: 
and was often put in mind (strange to say) of my little 
unknown friend, L^ndine — I must however say, further, 
that I felt what Charles Lamb describes, a sense of de- 
pression at times from the overshadowing of a so much 
more lofty intellect than my own: this (though it may 
seem, vain to say so) I never experienced before, though I 
have often been with much greater intellects : but I could 
not be mistaken in the universality of his mind; and 
perhaps I have received some benefit in the now more 



.Et. 2G] EDWAED FITZGEKALD 293 

distinct consciousness of my dwarfishness. I think that 
you should keep all this to yourself, my dear Allen: I 
mean, that it is only to you that I would write so freely 
about myself. You know most of my secrets, and I am 
not afraid of entrusting even my vanities to so true a 
man. . . . 

Pray, do not forget to say how the Freestone party 
are. My heart jumped to them, when I read in a guide 
book at Ambleside, that from Scawfell (a mountain in 
Westmoreland) you could see Snowdon. Perhaps you 
will not see the chain of -ideas : but I suppose there was 
one, else I don't know how it was that I tumbled, as it 
were, from the very summit of Scawfell, upon the 
threshold of Freestone. The mind soon traverses Wales. 
I have not been reading very much — (as if you ever ex- 
pected that I did!) — but I mean, not very much for me 
— some Dante, by the aid of a Dictionary : and some Mil- 
ton — and some Wordsworth — and some selections from 
Jeremy Taylor, Barrow, &c., compiled by Basil Montagu 
— of course you know the book: it is published by Pick- 
ering. I do not think that it is very well done: but it 
has served to delight, and, I think, to instruct me much. 
Do you know South ? He must be very great, I think. 
It seems to me that our old Divines will hereafter be 
considered our Classics — (in Prose, I mean) — I am not 
aware that any other nations have such books. A single 
selection from Jeremy Taylor is fine : but it requires a 
skilful hand to put many detached bits from him to- 
gether: for a common editor only picks out the flowery, 
metaphorical, morsels: and so rather cloys: and gives 
quite a wrong estimate of the Authour, to those who had 
no previous acquaintance with him: for, rich as Taylor's 
illustrations, and grotesque as his images, are, no one 
keeps a grander proportion: he never huddles illustra- 
tion upon the matter so as to overlay it, nor crowds images 
too thick together: which these Selections might make 
one unacquainted with him to suppose. This is always 
the fault of Selections: but Taylor is particularly liable 
to injury on this score. What a man he is! He has 
such a knowledge of the nature of man, and suf'h rowers 
of expressing its properties, that I sometimes feel as if 
he had had some exact counterpart of my own individual 



294 EDWARD FITZGERALD [.Et. 2(] 

character under his eye, when he lays open the depths of 
the heart, or traces some sin to its root. The eye of his 
portrait expresses this keen intuition: and I think I 
should less like to have stood with a lie on my tongue 
before him, than before any other I know of. . . . 

I beg you to give my best remembrances to your lady, 
who may be always sure that in all I wish of well for 
you, she is included: so that 1 take less care to make 
mention of her separately. . . . 



[^t. 26] 

To John Allen 
[the poor laws; southey's "coavper"] 

BouLGE Hall, Woodbridge, 
October 31, 1835. 
Dear Allen, 

I don't know what has come over me of late, that I 
have not written to you, nor any body else for several 
months. I am sure it is not from any decrease of affec- 
tion towards you. I now begin a letter merely on the 
score of wanting one from you; to let me know how you 
are; and Mrs. Allen too, especially. I hope to hear good 
news of her. Many things have happened to you since 
I saw you: you may be Bishop, for anything I know. I 
have been in Suffolk ever since I saw you. We are at 
[last] come to settle at this place: and I have been en- 
joying capital health in my old native air. I meant to 
have come to London for the winter : but my sisters are 
here, and I do not like to leave them. This parish is a 
very small one : it scarce contains fifty people : but that 
next to it, Bredfield, has more than four hundred: and 
some very poor indeed. We hope to be of some use: but 
the new Poor Laws have begun to be set afoot, and we 
don't know who is to stop in his cottage, or who is to go 
to the Workhouse. 'How much depends upon the issue 
of this measure! I am no politician: but I fear that no 
political measure will ever adjust matters well between 
rich and poor. . . . 

I have just read Southey's Life of Cowper ; that is to 
say, the first Volume. It is not a book to be read by 



^t. 29] EDWAKD FITZGEKALD 295 

every man at the fall of the leaf. It is a fearful book. 
Have you read it? Southey hits hard at Newton in the 
dark; which will give oii'ence to many people: but I per- 
fectly agree with him. At the same time, I think that 
Newton was a man of great power. Did you ever read 
his li:fe by himself? Pray do, if you have not. His jour- 
nal to his wife, written at .sea, contains some of the 
most beautiful things I ever read: fine feeling in very 
fine English. . . . 

Pray do write to me : a few lines soon are better than 
a three-decker a month hence: for I really want to know 
where and how you are: and so be a good boy for once 
in your life. Ever yours lovingly, E. F. G. 



[^t. 29] 

To Bernard Barton 

[CARLYLE's "FRENCH REVOLUTION"; TENNYSON] 

London, April, 1838. 
Dear Sir, 

John, who is going down iiTto Suffolk, will I hope take 
this letter and despatch it to you properly. I write more 
on account of this opportunity than of anything I have 
to say: for I am very heavy indeed with a kind of In- 
fluenza, which has blocked up most of my senses, and put 
a wet blanket over my brains. This state of head has 
not been improved by trying to get through a new book 
much in fashion — Carlyle's French Revolution — written 
in a German style. An Englishman writes of French 
Revolutions in a German style. People say the book is 
very deep: but it appears to me that the meaning seems 
deep from lying under mystical language. There is no 
repose, nor equable movement in it: all cut up into short 
sentences, half reflective, half narrative; so that one 
labours through it as vessels do through what is called 
a short sea — small, contrary going waves caused by shal- 
lows, and straits, and meeting tides, &c. I like to sail 
before the wind over the surface of an even-rolling elo- 
quence, like that of Bacon or the Opium Eater. There 
is also pleasant fresh water sailing with such writers as 
Addison; is there any pon(i-sailing in literature? that is. 



296 EDWAKD FITZGERALD [^t. 29 

drowsy, slow, and of small compass ? Perhaps we may 
say, some Sermons. But this is only conjecture. Cer- 
tainly Jeremy Taylor rolls along as majestically as any 
of them. We have had Alfred Tennyson here ; very droll, 
and very wayward: and much sitting- up of nights till 
two and three in the morning with pipes in our mouths : 
at which good hour we would get Alfred to give us some 
of his magic music, which he does between growling and 
smoking; and so to bed. All this has not cured my In- 
fluenza as you may imagine: but these hours shall be 
remembered long after the Influenza is forgotten. 

I have bought scarce any new books or prints: and am 
not sorry to see that I want so little more. One large 
purchase I have made however, the Biographic Univer- 
selle, 53 octavo volumes. It contains everything, and is 
the very best thing of its kind, and so referred to by all 
historians, &c. Surely nothing is more pleasant than, 
when some name crosses one, to go and get acquainted 
with the owner of the name: and this Biographic really 
has found places for people whom one would have thought 
almost too small for so comprehensive a work — which 
sounds like a solecism, or Bull, does it not? 

Now I must finish my letter: and a very stupid one 
it is. Here is a sentence of Warburton's that, I think, 
is very wittily expressed: though why I put it in here is 
not very discoverable. "The Church, like the Ark of 
Noah, is worth saving : not for the sake of the unclean 
beasts that almost filled it, and probably made most noise 
and clamour in it, but for the little corner of rationality, 
that was as much distressed by the stink within, as by 
the tempest without." Is it not good? It is out of his 
letters: and the best thing in them. It is also the best 
thing in mine. 

With kind remembrances to Miss Barton, believe me 
Yours very afi^ectionately 
E. FitzGerald. 



.Et 31] EDWAED FITZGERALD 297 

[.Et. 31] 

To W. H. Thompson 
["carlyle's ra\ixg book about heroes"] 

BouLGE Hall^ Woodbridge^ 
March 26, '41. . 
My dear Thompson, 

... I had a long letter from Morton the other day — 
he is still luxuriating at Venice. Also a letter from 
Frederic Tennyson, who has been in Sicily &c. and is 
much distracted between enjoyment of those climates 
and annoyance from Fleas. These two men are to be at 
Rome together soon : so if any one wants to go to Rome, 
now is a good time. I wish I was there. F. Tennyson 
says that he and a party of Englishmen fought a cricket 
match with the crew of the Bellerophon on the Partli- 
enopcean hills (query about the correctness of this — I 
quote from memory), and sacl-ed the sailors by 90 runs. 
Is not this pleasant? — the notion of good English blood 
striving in worn out Italy — I like that such men as 
Frederic should be abroad: so strong, haughty, and pas- 
sionate. They keep up the English character abroad. 
. . . Have you read poor Carlyle's raving book about 
heroes? Of course you have, or I would ask you to buy 
my copy. I don't like to live with it in the house. It 
smoulders. He ought to be laughed at a little. But it 
is pleasant to retire to the Tale of a Tub, Tristram 
Shandy, and Horace Walpole, after being tossed on his 
canvas waves. This is blasphemy. Dibdin Pitt of the 
Coburg could enact one of his heroes. . . . 



[^t. 33] 

To Bernard Barton 
[naseby battle-field] 

[Naseby], Septr. 22, '42. 
My deal' Barton, 

The pictures are left all ready packed up in Portland 
Place, and shall come down with me, whenever that de- 
sirable event takes place. In the mean while here I am 
as before: but having received a long and interesting 



298 EDWAKD FITZGEEALD [JEt 33 

letter from Carlyle asking information about this Battle 
field, I have trotted about rather more to ascertain names 
of places, positions &c. After all he will make a mad 
book. I have just seen some of the bones of a dragoon 
and his horse who were found foundered in a morass in 
the field — poor dragoon, much dismembered by time: his 
less worthy members having been left in the owner's 
summer-house for the last twenty years have disappeared 
one by one: but his skull is kept safe in the hall: not a 
bad skull neither: and in it some teeth yet holding, and 
a hit of ^he iron heel of his hoot, put into the skull by 
way of convenience. This is what Sir Thomas Browne 
calls "making a man act his Antipodes." I have got a 
.fellow to dig at one of the great general graves in the 
field : and he tells me to-night that he has come to bones : 
to-morrow I will select a neat specimen or two. In the 
mean time let the full harvest moon wonder at them as 
they lie turned up after lying hid 2400 revolutions of 
hers. Think of that warm 14th of June when the Battle 
was fought, and they fell pell-mell: and then the country 
people came and buried them so shallow that the stench 
was terrible, and the putrid matter oozed over the ground 
for several yards : so that the cattle were observed to eat 
those places very close for some years after. Every one 
to his taste, as one might well say to any woman who 
kissed the cow that pastured there. 

Friday, 23rd. We have dug at a place, as I said, and 
made such a trench as would hold a dozen fellows : whose 
remains positively make up the mould. The bones nearly 
all rotted away, except the teeth which are quite good. 
At the bottom lay the foi^m of a perfect skeleton: most 
of the bones gone, but the. pressure distinct in the clay: 
the thigh and leg bones yet extant: the skull a little 
pushed forward, as if there were scanty room. We also 
tried some other reputed graves, but found nothing: in- 
deed it is not easy to distinguish what are graves from 
old marl-pits &c. I don't care for all this bone-rum- 
maging myself: but the identification of the graves iden- 
tifies also where the greatest heat of the battle was. Do 
you wish for a tooth? 

As I began this antiquarian account in a letter to you, 
so I have finished it, that you may mention it to my 



.Et. 34] EDWARD FITZGERALD 299 

Papa, who perhaps will be amused at it. Two farmers 
insisted on going out exploring with me all day: one a 
very solid fellow who talks like the justices in Shake- 
speare : but who certainly was inspired in finding out this 
grave: the other a Scotchman full of intelligence, who 
proposed the flesh-soil for manure for turnips. The old 
Vicar, whose age reaches half-way back to the day of 
the Battle, stood tottering over the verge of the trench. 
Carlyle has shewn great sagacity in guessing at the lo- 
calities from the vague descriptions of contemporaries: 
and his short pasticcio of the battle is the best I have 
seen. But he will spoil all by making a demi-god of 
Cromwell, who certainly was so far from wise that he 
brought about the very thing he fought to prevent — the 
restoration of an unrestricted monarchy. 



[^t. 34] 

To Frederic Texxysox 
[a suxday letter] 

BouLGE Hall, Woodbridge, 

Sunday, Dec. 10, 1843. 
Dear Frederic, 

Either you wrote me word yourself, or some one told 
me, that you meant to winter at Florence. So I shall 
direct to the Poste Restante there. You see I am not 
settled at the Florence of Suffolk, called Ipswich, yet: 
but I am. perhaps as badly off; being in the most dull 
country house quite alone; a grey mist that seems teem- 
ing with .half formed snow, all over the landscape before 
my windows. It is also Sunday morning: ten of the 
clock by the chime now sounding from the stables. I 
have fed on bread and milk (a dreadfully opaque diet) 
and I await the morning church in humble hope. It will 
begin in half an hour. We keep early hours in the coun- 
try. So you will be able to measure my aptitude and 
fullness for letter writing by the quantity written now, 
before I bolt off for hat, gloves, and prayerbook. I al- 
ways put on my thickest great coat to go to our Church 
in : as fungi grow in great numbers about the communion 
table. And now, to turn away from Boulge, I must tell 



300 EDWARD FITZGEEALD [^t. 34 

you that I went up to London a month ago to see old 
Thackeray, who had come there to have his eyes doc- 
tored. I stayed with him ten days and we were as usual 
together. Alfred came up "in transitu" from Boxley to 
Cheltenham; he looked, and said he was, ill: I have never 
seen him so hopeless : and I am really anxious to know 
how he is. ... I remember the days of the summer 
when you and I were together, quarreling and laughing 
— these I remember with pleasure. Our trip to Gravesend 
has left a perfume with me. I can get up with you on 
that everlastingly stopping coach on which we tried to. 
travel from Gravesend to Maidstone that Sunday morn- 
ing: worn out with it, we got down at an inn, and then 
got up on another — and an old smiling fellow passed us 
holding out his hat — and you said, "That old fellow must 
go about as Homer did" — and numberless other turns 
of road and humour, which sometimes pass before me as 
I lie in bed. . . . Xow before I turn over, I will go and 
see about Church, as I hear no bell, pack myself up as 
warmly as I can, and be off. So good-bye till twelve 
o'clock. . . . 'Tis five minutes past twelve by the stable 
clock: so I saw as I returned from Church through the 
garden. Parson and Clerk got through the service see- 
saw, like two men in a sawpit. In the garden I see the 
heads of the snowdrops and crocuses just out of the 
earth. Another year with its same flowers and topics to 
open upon us. Shenstone somewhere sings 

Tedious again to mark the drizzling day, 
Again to trace the same sad tracts of snow: 

Or, luU'd by vernal airs, again survey 

The selfsame hawthorn bud, and cowslips blow. 

I rely on you and all your family sympathizing in this. 
So do I sometimes — anyhow, people complimenting each 
other on the approach of Spring and such like felicita- 
tions are very tiresome. Our very year is of a paltry 
diameter. But this is not proper language for Mark 
Tapley — whose greatest bore just now is having a bad 
pen — but the letter is ended. So he is jolly and yours 
as ever. 



.Et. 35] EDWAKD FITZGEKALD 301 

[^t. 35] 

To Bernard Barton 
[a kitten; carlyle; a preacher] 

19 Charlotte St., April 11, '44. 
Dear Barton, 

I am still indignant at this nasty place London. Thack- 
eray, whom I came up to see, went off to Brighton the 
night after I arrived, and has not reappeared : but I must 
wait some time longer for him. Thank Miss Barton much 
for the hit; if it is but a kit: my old woman is a great 
lover of cats, and hers has just kitted, and a wretched 
little blind puling tabby lizard of a thing was to be saved 
from the pail for me : but if Miss Barton's is a hit, I will 
gladly have it: and my old lady's shall be disposed of — 
not to the pail. Oh rus, quando te aspiciam? Construe 
that, Mr. Barton. — I am going to send down my pictures 
to Boulge, if I can secure them: they are not quite se- 
cure at present. If they vanish, I snap my fingers at 
them, Magi and all — there is a world (alas I) elsewhere 
beyond pictures — Oh, oh, oh, oh — 

I smoked a pipe with Carlyle yesterday. We ascended 
from his -dining room carrying pipes and tobacco up 
through two stories of his house, and got into a little 
dressing room near the roof : there we sat down : the 
window was open and looked out on nursery gardens, 
their almond trees in blossom, and beyond, bare walls of 
houses, and over these, roofs and chimneys, and roofs 
and chimneys, and here and there a steeple, and whole 
London crowned w^ith darkness gathering behind like the 
illimitable resources of a dream. I tried to persuade him 
to leave the accursed den, and he wished — but — but — 
perhaps he didn't wish on the whole. 

When I get back to Boulge I shall recover my quietude, 
which is now all in a ripple. But it is a shame to talk 
of such things. So Churchyard has caught another Con- 
stable. Did he get off our Debach boy that set the shed 
on fire? Ask him that. Canst thou not minister to a 
mind diseased &c. 

A cloud comes over Charlotte Street and seems as if it 
were sailing softly on the April wind to fall in a blessed 
shower upon the lilac buds and thirsty anemones some- 



302 EDWAED FITZGEKALD [JEt. 35 

where in Essex; or, who knows? perhaps at Boulge. Out 
will run Mrs. Faiers, and with red arms and face of woe 
haul in the struggling windows of the cottage, and make 
all tight. Beauty Bob will cast a bird's eye out at the 
shower, and bless the useful wet. Mr. Loder will ob- 
serve to the farmer for whom he is doing up a dozen of 
Queen's Heads that it will be of great use : and the farmer 
will agree that his young barleys wanted it much. The 
German Ocean will dimple with innumerable pin points, 
and porpoises rolling near the surface sneeze with un- 
usual pellets of fresh water — 

Can such things be, 
And overcome us like a summer cloud. 
Without our special wonder? 

Oh this wonderful wonderful world, and we who stand 
in the middle of it are all in a maze, except poor Matthews 
of Bedford, who fixes his eyes upon a wooden Cross and 
has no misgiving whatever. When I was at his chapel 
on Good Friday, he called at the end of his grand sermon 
on some of the people to say merely this, that they be- 
lieved Christ had redeemed them : and first one got up 
and in sobs declared she believed it: and then another, 
and then another — I was quite overset: — all poor people: 
how much richer than all who fill the London Churches. 
Theirs is the kingdom of Heaven ! 
This is a sad farrago. Farewell. 



[^t. 35] 

To Frederic Tennyson 
["my way of life"; constable] 

Boulge, Woodbridge, May 24, '44. 
My dear Frederic, 

I think you mean never to write to me again. But 
you should, for I enjoy your letters much for years after 
I have got them. They tell me all I should know of 
Italy, besides many other good things. I received one 
letter from you from Florence, and as you gave me no 
particular direction, I wrote to you at the Poste Ees- 



Mt 35] EDWAED FITZGERALD- 303 

tante there. I am now inditing this letter on the same 
venture. As my location is much more permanent, I 
command you to respond to me the very day you get this, 
warmed into such faint inspiration as my turnip radi- 
ance can kindle. You have seen a turnip lantern per- 
haps. Well, here I continue to exist: have broken my 
rural vegetation by one month in London, where I saw 
all the old faces — some only in passing, however — saw as 
few sights as possible, leaving London two days before 
the Exhibition opened. This is not out of moroseness 
or love of singularity: but I really supposed there could 
be nothing new: and therefore the best way would [be] 
to come new to it oneself after three or four years ab- 
sence. I see in Punch a humourous catalogue of sup- 
posed pictures; Prince Albert's favorite spaniel and boot- 
jack, the Queen's Macaw with a Mulfin &c., by Landseer 
&c., in which I recognize Thackeray's fancy. He is in 
full vigour play and pay in London, writing in a dozen 
reviews, and a score of newspapers: and while health 
lasts he sails before the wind. I have not heard of Alfred 
since March. . . . Spedding devotes his days to Lord 
Bacon in the British Museum: his nights to the usual 
profligacy. . . . My dear Frederic, you must select some 
of your poems and publish them: we want some bits of 
strong genuine imagination to help put to flight these 

&c. Publish a book of fragments, if nothing else 

but single lines, or else the whole poems. When will you 
come to England and do it? I dare say I should have 
stayed longer in London had you been there: but the 
wits were too much for me. Xot Spedding, mind: who 
is a dear fellow. But one finds few in London serious 
men: I mean serious even in fun: with a true purpose 
and character whatsoever it may be. London melts away 
all individuality into a common lump of cleverness. I 
am amazed at the humour and worth and noble feeling 
in the country, however much railroads have mixed us 
up with metropolitan civilization. I can still find the 
heart of England beating healthily down here though no 
one will believe it. 

You know my way of life so well that I need not de- 
scribe it to you, as it has undergone no change since I 
saw you. I read of mornings; the same old books over 



304 EDWARD FITZGERALD [^t. 35 

and over again, having no command of new ones: walk 
with my great black dog of an afternoon, and at evening 
sit with open windows, up to which China roses climb, 
with my pipe, while the blackbirds and thrushes begin 
to rustle bedwards in the garden, and the nightingale 
to have the neighbourhood to herself. We have had such 
a spring (bating the last ten days) as would have satis- 
fied even you with warmth. And such verdure! white 
clouds moving over the new fledged tops of oak trees, 
and acres of grass striving with buttercups. How old 
to tell of, how new to see! I believe that Leslie's Life 
of Constable (a very charming book) has given me a 
fresh love of Spring. Constable loved it above all sea- 
sons: he hated Autumn. When Sir G. Beaumont who 
was of the old classical taste asked him if he did not find 
it difficult to place his hrown tree in his pictures, "Not 
at all," said C, "I never put one in at all." And when 
Sir George was crying up the tone of the old masters' 
landscapes, and quoting an old violin as the proper tone 
of colour for a picture, Constable got up, took an old 
Cremona, and laid it down on the sunshiny grass. You 
would like the book. In defiance of all this, I have hung 
my room with pictures, like very old fiddles indeed: but 
I agree with Sir George and Constable both. I like pic- 
tures that are not like nature. I can have nature better 
than any picture by looking out of my window. Yet I 
respect the man who tries to paint up to the freshness 
of earth and sky. Constable did not wholly achieve what 
he tried at: and perhaps the old masters chose a soberer 
scale of things as more within the compass of lead paint. 
To paint dew with lead! 

I also plunge away at my old Handel of nights, and 
delight in the Allegro and Penseroso, full of pomp and 
fancy. What a pity Handel could not have written music 
to some great Masque, such as Ben Jonson or Milton 
would have written, if they had known of such a mu- 
sician to write for. 



.Et. 35] EDWARD FITZGEEALD 305 

[^t. 35] 

To Frederic Tennyson 

[''A LITTLE MORE FOLDING OF THE HANDS"] 

BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE, Oct. 10, '44. 

My dear Frederic, 

You will think I have wholly cut you. But I wrote 
half a letter to you three months ago; and mislaid it; 
spent some time in looking for it, always hoping; and 
then some more time despairing; and we all know how 
time goes when [we] have got a thing to do which we 
are rather lazy about doing. As for instance, getting up 
in a morning. Not that writing a letter to you is so bad 
as getting up; but it is not easy for mortal man wdio 
has heard, seen, done, and thought, nothing since he last 
wrote, to fill one of these big foreign sheets full as a 
foreign letter ought to be. I am now returned to my 
dull home here after my usual pottering about in the 
midland counties of England. A little Bedfordshire — 
a little JSTorthamptonshire — a little more folding of the 
hands — the same faces — -the same fields — the same 
thoughts occurring at the same turns of road — this is all 
I have to tell of; nothing at all added — but the summer 
gone. My garden is covered with yellow and brown 
leaves; and a man is digging up the garden beds before 
my window, and will plant some roots and bulbs for next 
year. My parsons come and smoke with me &c. "The 
round of life from hour to hour" — alluding doubtless to 
a mill-horse. x\lfred is reported to be still at Park House, 
where he has been sojourning for two months, I think; 
but he never writes me a word. Hydropathy has done its 
worst; he writes the names of his friends in water. . . . 
I spent two days in London with old Morton about five 
weeks ago; and pleasant days they were. The rogue be- 
witches me with his wit and honest speech. He also 
stayed some while at Park House, while Alfred was there, 
and managed of course to frighten the party occasionally 
with some of his sallies. He often writes to me; and 
very good his letters are all of them. 

When do you mean to write me another? Morton told 
me in his last that he had heard from Brotherton you 
were gone, or going, to Naples. I dare say this sheet of 



306 EDWAKD FITZGERALD [^t. 35 

mine will never get to your hands. But if it does, let 
me hear from you. Is Italy becoming stale to you ? Are 
you going to Cairo for fresh sensations? Thackeray went 
off in a steamboat about the time the French were be- 
fore Mogadore; he was to see those coasts and to visit 
Jerusalem! Titmarsh at Jerusalem will certainly be an 
era in Christianity. But I suppose he will soon be back 
now. Spedding is yet in his highlands, I believe, con- 
sidering Grouse and Bacon. 

I expect to run up to London some time during the 
winter, just to tell over old friends' faces and get a sup 
of music and painting. I have bought very few more 
pictures lately; and [heard] no music but Mendelssohn's 
M. Night's Dream. The overture, which was published 
long ago, is the best part; but there is a very noble tri- 
umphal march also. 

Now I feel just in the same fix as I did in that sheet 
of paper whose fate is uncertain. But if I don't put in 
a word more, yet this shall go, I am determined. Only 
consider how it is a matter of necessity that I should 
have nothing to say. If you could see this place of 
Boulge! You who sit and survey marble palaces rising 
out of cypress and olive. There is a dreadful vulgar bal- 
lad, composed by Mr. Balfe, and sung with the most un- 
bounded applause by Miss Bainforth, 

"I dreamt that I dwelt in marble Halls," 

which is sung and organed at every corner in London. I 
think you may imagine what kind of flowing 6/8 time of 
the last degree of imbecility it is. The words are written 
by Mr. Bunn! Arcades ambo. 

I say we shall see you over in England before long: 
for I rather think you want an Englishman to quarrel 
with sometimes. I mean quarrel in the sense of a good 
strenuous difference of opinion, supported on either side 
by occasional outbursts of spleen. Come and let us try. 
You used to irritate my vegetable blood sometimes. 



^t. 35] EDWARD FITZGERALD 307 

[^t. 35] 

To Frederic Tennyson 
["a talent for dullness"; senega; the sound of the sea] 

BouLGE, Woodbridge, Dec. 8-, '44. 
My dear Frederic, 

What is a poor devil to do? You tell me quite truly 
that my letters have not two ideas in them, and yet you 
tell me to write my two ideas as soon as I can. So in- 
deed it is so far easy to write down one's two ideas, if 
they are not very abstruse ones: but then what the devil 
encouragement is it to a poor fellow to expose his naked- 
ness so? All I can say is, to say again that if you lived 
in this place, you would "not write so long a letter as you 
have done, full of capital description and all good things; 
though without any compliment I am sure you would 
write a better than I shall. But you see the original 
fault in me is that I choose to be in such a place as 
this at all; that argues certainly a talent for dullness 
which no situation nor intercourse of men could much 
improve. It is true; I really do like to sit in this dole- 
ful place with a good fire, •&. cat and dog on the rug, and 
an old woman in the kitchen. This is- all my live stock. 
The house is yet damp as last year; and the great event 
of this winter is my putting up a trough round the eaves 
to carry off the wet. There was discussion whether the 
trough should be of iron or of zinc: iron dear and last- 
ing; zinc the reverse. It was decided for iron; and ac- 
cordingly iron is put up. 

Why should I not live in London and see the world? 
you say. Why then I say as before, I don't like it. I 
think the dullness of country people is better than the 
impudence of Londoners; and the fresh cold and wet of 
our clay fields better than a fog that stinks per se; and 
this room of mine, clean at all events, better than a dirty 
room in Charlotte St. If you, Morton, and Alfred, were 
more in London, I should be there more; but now there 
is but Spedding and Allen whom I care a straw about. 
I have written two notes to Alfred to ask him just to 
notify his existence to me; but you know he is obstinate 
on that point. I heard from Carlyle that he (Alfred) 
had passed an evening at Chelsea much to C's delight; 



308 EDWARD FITZGERALD [.Et. 35 

who has opened the gates of his Valhalla to let Alfred 
in. Thackeray is at Malta, whera I am told he means 
to winter. ... 

Old Seneca, I have no doubt, was a great humbug in 
deed, and his books have plenty of it in word; but he 
had got together a vast deal of what was not humbug 
from others; and, as far as I see, the old philosophers 
are available now as much as two thousand years back. 
Perhaps you will think that is not saying much. Don't 
suppose I think it good philosophy in myself to keep 
here out of the world, and sport a gentle Epicurism; I 
do not; I only follow something of a natural inclination, 
and know not if I could do better under a more cotnplex 
system. It is very smooth sailing hitherto down here. 
No velvet waistcoat and ever-lustrous pumps to be con- 
sidered; no bon mots got up; no information necessary. 
There is a pipe for the parsons to smoke, and quite as 
much bon mots, literature, and philosophy as they care 
for without any trouble at all. If we could but feed our 
poor! It is now the 8th of December; it has blown a 
most desperate East wind, all razors; a wind like one 
of those knives one sees at shops in London, with 365 
blades all drawn and pointed; the wheat is all sown; the 
fallows cannot be ploughed. What are all the poor folks 
to do during the winter? And they persist in having the 
same enormous families they used to do ; a woman came 
to me two days [ago] who had seventeen children ! What 
farmers are to employ all these? What landlord can 
find room for them? The law of generation must be re- 
pealed. The London press does nothing but rail at us 
poor country folks for our cruelty. I am glad they do 
so; for there is much to be set right. But I want to 
know if the Editor of the Times is more attentive to 
his devils, their wives and families, than our squires and 
squiresses and parsons are to their fellow parishioners. 
Punch also assumes a tone of virtuous satire, from the 
mouth of Mr. Douglas Jerrold! It is easy to sit in arm 
chairs at a club in Pall Mall and rail on the stupidity 
and brutality of those in High Suffolk. 

Come, I have got more than two ideas into this sheet; 
but I don't know if you won't dislike them worse than 
mere nothing. But I was determined to fill my letter. 



/i:t. 35] EDWAKD FITZGERALD 309 

Yes, you are to know that I slept at Woodbridge last 
nig'ht, went to church there this morning, where every 
one sat with a purple nose, and heard a dismal well- 
meant sermon; and the organ blew us out with one 
grand idea at all events, one of old Handel's Coronation 
Anthems; that I dined early, also in Woodbridge; and 
walked up here with a tremendous East wind blowing 
sleet in my face from over the German Sea, that I found 
your letter when I entered my room; and reading it 
through, determined to spin you off a sheet incontinently, 
and lo ! here it is ! Now or never ! I shall now have my 
tea in, and read over your letter again while at it. You 
are quite right in saying that Gravesend excursions with 
you do me good. When did I doubt it? I remember 
them with great pleasure; few of my travels so much so. 
I like a short journey in good company; and I like you 
all the better for your Englishman's humours. One 
doesn't find such things in London; something more like 
it here in the country, where every one, with whatever 
natural stock of intellect endowed, at least grows up his 
own way, and flings his branches about him, not stretched 
on the espalier of London dinner-table company. 

P.8. Next morning. Snow over the ground. We have 
our wonders of inundation in Suffolk also, I can tell you. 
For three weeks ago such floods came, that an old woman 
was carried off as she was retiring from a beer house 
about 9 p.m., and drowned. She was probably half seas 
over before she left the beer house. 

And three nights ago I looked out at about ten o'clock 
at night, before going to bed. It seemed perfectly still; 
frosty, and the stars shining bright. I heard a continu- 
ous moaning sound, which I knew to be, not that of an 
infant exposed, or female ravished, but of the sea, more 
than ten miles off! What little wind there was carried 
to us the murmurs of the waves circulating round these 
coasts so far over a flat country. But people here think 
that this sound so heard is not from the waves that break, 
but a kind of prophetic voice from the body of the sea 
itself announcing great gales. Sure enough we have got 
them, however heralded. Now I say that all this shows 
ilivd we in this Suffolk are not so completely given over 



310 EDWARD FITZGERALD [^t. 36 

to prose and turnips as some would have us. I always 
said that being near the sea, and being able to catch a 
glimpse of it from the tops of hills, and of houses, re- 
deemed Suffolk from dulness; and at all events that our 
turnip fields, dull in themselves, were at least set all 
round with an undeniably poetic element. And so I see 
Arnold says; he enumerates five inland counties as the 
only parts of England for which nothing could be said 
in praise. Not that I agree with him there neither; I 
cannot allow the valley of the Ouse about which some of 
my pleasantest recollections hang to be without its great 
charm. W. Browne, whom you despised, is married, and 
I shall see but little of him for the future. I have laid 
by my rod and line by the willows of the Ouse forever. 
"He is married and cannot come." This change is the 
true meaning of those verses, 

Friend after friend departs; 
Who has not lost a friend? 

and so on. If I were conscious of being steadfast and 
good humoured enough I would marry to-morrow. But 

a humourist is best by himself. 



[^t. 36] 

To Frederic Tennyson 
["these painters"; "the great garden band"] 

BouLGE, WooDBRiDGE, June 12, '45. 
Dear Frederic, 

Though I write from Boulge you are not to suppose 
I have been here ever since I last wrote to you. On the 
contrary, I am but just returned from London, where I 
spent a month, and saw all the sights and all the people 
I cared to see. But what am I to tell you of them? 
Spedding, you know, does not change : he is now the same 
that he was fourteen years old when I first knew him at 
school more than twenty years ago ; wise, calm, bald, com- 
bining the best qualities of Youth and Age. And then 
as to things seen; you know that one Exhibition tells 
another, and one Panorama certifieth another &c. If 
you want to know something of the Exhibition however, 
read Eraser's Magazine for this month; there Thackeray 



JEt. 36] EDWAED FITZGEKALD 311 

has a paper on the matter, full of fun. I met Stone in 
the street the other day; he took me by the button, and 
told me in perfect sincerity, and with increasing warmth, 
how, though he loved old .Thackeray, yet these yearly 
out-speakings of his sorely tired him; not on account of 
himself (Stone), but on account of some of his friends^ 
Charles Landseer, Maclise &c. Stone worked himself up 
to such a pitch under the pressure of forced calmness 
that he at last said Thackeray would get himself horse- 
whipped one day by one of these infuriated Apelleses. 
At this I, who had partly agreed with Stone that ridi- 
cule, though true, needs not always to be spoken, began 
to laugh: and told him two could play at that game. 
These painters cling together, and bolster each other up, 
to such a degree, that they really have persuaded them- 
selves that anyone who ventures to laugh at one of their 
drawings, exhibited publickly for the express purpose of 
criticism, insults the whole corps. In the mean while 
old Thackeray laughs at all this; and goes on in his own 
way; writing hard for half a dozen Eeviews and News- 
papers all the morning; dining, drinking, and talking of 
a night; managing to preserve a fresh colour and per- 
petual flow of spirits under a wear-and-tear of thinking 
and feeding that would have knocked up any other man 
I know two years ago, at least. . . . 

Alfred was in London the first week of my stay there. 
He was looking well, and in good spirits ; and had got 
two hundred lines of a new poem in a butcher's book. He 
went down to Eastbourne in Sussex; where I believe he 
now is. He and I made a plan to go to the coast of Corn- 
wall or Wales this summer; but I suppose we shall man- 
age never to do it. I find I must go to Ireland; which 
I had not intended to do this year. . . . 

Now I have told you all my London news. You will 
not hear of my Cottage and Garden; so now I will shut 
up shop and have done. We have had a dismal wet May; 
but now June is recompensing us for all, and Dr. Blow 
may be said to be leading the great Garden Band in full 
chorus. This is a pun, which, profound in itself, you 
must not expect to enjoy at first reading. I am not [sure] 
that I am myself conscious of the full meaning of it. 
I know it is very hot weather; the distant woods steam- 



312 EDWARD FITZGERALD ^t. 38] 

ing blue under the noonday sun. I suppose you are living 
without clothes in wells, where you are. Remember me 
to your brothers; write soon; and believe me ever yours, 

E. FitzGerald. 
As to going to Italy, alas! I have less call to do that 
than ever: I never shall go. You must come over here 
about your Railroad land. 



[^t. 38] 

To Samuel Laurence 

[a portrait of a QUAKER POET] 

Geldestone Hall^ Beccles, 
[June 20, 1847.] 
My dear Laurence, — 

I have had another letter from the Bartons asking about 
your advent. In fact Barton's daughter is anxious for 
her Father's [portrait] to be done, and done this year. 
He is now sixty-three ; and it won't do, you , know, for 
grand-climacterical people to procrastinate — nay, to pro- 
annuate — which is a new, and, for all I see, a very bad 
word. But, be this as it may, do you come down to 
Woodbridge this summer if you can; and that you can, 
I doubt not; since it is no great things out of your way 
to or from Norwich. 

The means to get to Ipswich are — A steamboat will 
bring you for five shillings (a very pretty sail) from the 
Custom House to Ipswich, the Orwell steamer; going 
twice a week, and heard of directly in the fishy latitudes 
of London Bridge. Or, a railroad brings you for the 
same sum; if you will travel third class, which I some- 
times do in fine weather. I should recommend that; the 
time being so short, so certain; and no eating and drink- 
ing by the way, as must be in a steamer. At Ipswich, I 
pick you up with the washerwoman's pony and take you 
to Woodbridge. There Barton sits with the tea already 
laid out; and Miss about to manage the urn; plain, 
agreeable people. At Woodbridge too is my little friend 
Churchyard, with whom we shall sup off toasted cheese 
and porter. Then, last and not least, the sweet retire- 
ment of Boulge : where the Graces and Muses &c. 



.Et. 38] EDWARD FITZGERALD 313 

I write thus much because my friends seem anxious; 
my friend, I mean, Miss Barton : for Barton pretends 
he dreads having his portrait done; which is "my eye." 
So come and do it. He is a generous, worthy, simple- 
hearted, fellow: worth ten thousand better wits. Then 
you shall see all the faded tapestry of country town life: 
London jokes worn threadbare; third rate accomplish- 
ments infinitely prized; scandal removed from Dukes and 
Duchesses to the Parson, the Banker, the Commissioner 
of Excise, and the Attorney. 

Let me hear from you soon that you are coming. I 
shall return to Boulge the end of this week. 

P. 8. — Come if you can the latter part of the week; 
when the Quaker is most at leisure. There is a daily 
coach from Woodbridge to Norwich. 

[.Et 38] 

To Samuel Laurence 

["WORDSWORTH — OR SKIDDAW^ OR ANY OF THE BEAUTIES?"] 

BouLGi?, Woodbridge, 
[30 Jan., 1848.] 
My dear Laurence, — 

How are you — how are you getting on ? A voice from 
the tombs thus addresses you; respect the dead and an- 
swer. Barton is well; that is, I left him well on Friday; 
but he was just going off to attend a Quaker's funeral 
in the snow : whether he has survived that, I don't know. 
To-morrow is his Birth-day: and I am going (if he be 
alive) to help him to celebrate it. His portrait has been 
hung (under my directioiis) over the mantel-piece in his 
sitting room, with a broad margin of some red stuff 
behind it, to set it off. You may turn up your nose at 
all this; but let me tell you it is considered one of the 
happiest contrivances ever adopted in Woodbridge. Nine- 
teen people out of twenty like the portrait much; the 
twentieth, you may be sure, is a man of no taste at all. 

I hear you were for a long time in Cumberland.' Did 
you paint a waterfall — or old Wordsworth — or Skiddaw, 
or any of the beauties? Did you see anything so in- 
viting to the pencil as the river Deben? When are you 



314 EDWAED FITZGEKALD zEt. 39] 

coming to see us again? Churchyard relies on your 
coming ; but then he is a very sanguine man, and, though 
a lawyer, wonderfully confident in the promises of men. 
How are all your family? You see I have asked you 
some questions; so you must answer them; and believe 
me yours truly, 

E. FitzGerald. 

[^t. 39] 

To Frederic Tennyson 
[speddixg; oratorios; "vanity fair"] 

Boulge, May 4, 1848. 
My dear Frederic, — 

When you talk of two idle men not taking the trouble 
to keep up a little intercourse by letters, you do not, in 
conscience, reflect upon me; who, you know, am very 
active in answering almost by return of post. It is some 
six months since you must have got my last letter, full 
of most instructive advice concerning my namesake; of 
whom, and of which, you say nothing. How much has 
he borrowed of you? Is he now living on the top of 
your hospitable roof? Do you think him the most ill- 
used of men? I see great advertisements in the papers 
about your great Grimsby Railway. . . . Does it pay? 
does it pay all but you who live only on the fine promises 
of the lawyers and directors engaged in it? You know 
England has had a famous winter of it for commercial 
troubles: my family has not escaped the agitation: I 
even now doubt if I must not give up my daily two- 
pennyworth of cream and take to milk: and give up 
my Spectator and Athenaeum. ' I don't trouble myself 
much about all this: for, unless the kingdom goes to 
pieces by national bankruptcy, I shall probably have 
enough to live on: and, luckily, every year I want less: 
What do you think of my not going up to London this 
year; to see exhibitions, to hear operas, and so on! In- 
deed I do not think I shall go: and I have no great 
desire to go. I hear of nothing new in any way worth 
going up for. I have never yet heard the famous Jenny 
Lind, w^hom all the world raves about. Spedding is espe- 
cially mad about her, I understand: and, after that, is 



^t. 39] EDWAKD FITZGEKALD 315 

it not best for weaker vessels to keep out of her way? 
Night after night is that bald head seen in one particu- 
lar position in the Opera house, in a stall; the miserable 
man has forgotten Bacon and philosophy, and goes after 
strange women. There is no doubt this lady is a won- 
derful singer; but I will not go into hot crowds till an- 
other Pasta comes; I have heard no one since her worth 
being crushed for. And to perform in one's head one of 
Handel's choruses is better than most of the Exeter Hall 
performances. I went to hear Mendelssohn's Elijah last 
spring: and found it wasn't at all worth the trouble. 
Though very good music it is not original: Haydn much 
better. I think the day of Oratorios is gone, like the day 
for painting Holy Familys &c. But we cannot get tired 
of what has been done in Oratorios more than we can 
get tired of Raffaelle. Mendelssohn is really original and 
beautiful in romantic music: witness his Midsummer 
Night's Dream, and Fingal's Cave. 

I had a note from Alfred three months ago. He was 
then in London: but is now in Ireland, I think, adding 
to his new poem, the Princess. Have you seen it ? I am 
considered a great heretic for abusing it; it seems to me 
a wretched w^aste of power at a time of life when a 
man ought to be doing his best; and I almost feel hope- 
less about Alfred now. I mean, about his doing what he 
was born to do. . . . On the other hand, Thackeray is 
progressing greatly in his line: he publishes a Novel in 
numbers^Vanity Fair — which began dull, I thought : but 
gets better every number, and has some very fine things 
indeed in it. He is become a great man I am told: goes 
to Holland House, and Devonshire House: and for some 
reason or other, will not write a word to me. But I am 
sure this is not because he is asked to Holland House. 
Dickens has fallen off in his last novel, just completed; 
but there are wonderful things in it too. Do you ever 
get a glimpse of any of these things? 

As to public affairs, they are so wonderful that one 
does not know where to begin. If England maintains her 
own this year, she must have the elements of long lasting 
in her. I think People begin to wish we had no more 
to do with Ireland: but the Whigs will never listen to 
a doctrine which was never heard of in Holland House. 



316 EDWAED FITZGEKALD [^t. 39 

I am glad Italy is free: and surely there is nothing for 
her now but a Republic. It is well to stand by old kings 
who have done well by us: but it is too late in the day 
to hegi7i Royalty. 

If anything could tempt me so far as Italy, it would 
certainly be your presence in Florence. But I boggle 
about going twenty miles, and cui honof deadens me more 
and more. 

July 2. All that precedes was written six weeks ago, 
when I was obliged to go up to London on business. . . . 
I saw Alfred, and the rest of the sgavans. Thackeray is 
a great man : goes to Devonshire House &c. : and his book 
(which is capital) is read by the Great: and will, I hope, 
do them good. I heard but little music: the glorious 
Acis and Galatea ; and the redoubtable Jenny Lind, for 
the first time. I was disappointed in her: but am told 
this is all my fault. As to naming her in the same 
Olympiad with great old Pasta, I am sure that is ridicu- 
lous. The Exhibition is like most others you have seen; 
worse perhaps. There is an "Aaron" and a "John the 
Baptist" by Etty far worse than the Saracen's Head on 
Ludgate Hill. Moore is turned Picture dealer: and that 
high Roman virtue in which he indulged is likely to 
suffer a Picture-dealer's change, I think. Carlyle writes 
in the Examiner about Ireland: raves and foams, but has 
nothing to propose. Spedding prospers with Bacon. Al- 
fred seemed to me in fair plight: much dining out: and 
his last Poem is well liked I believe. Morton is still at 
Lisbon, I believe also: but I have not written to him, 
nor heard from him. And now, my dear Frederic, I must 
shut up. Do not neglect to write to me sometimes. Al- 
fred said you ought to be in England about your Grimsby 
Land. 



.Et. 50] EDWAKD FITZGERALD 317 

[^t. 50] 

To W. F. Pollock 
[-^iiscellaneous reading] 

10 Marine Terrace, 

Lowestoft, 
Febr. 23, '60. 
My dear Pollock, — 

"Me voila ici'' still! having weathered it out so long. 
No bad Place, I assure you, though you who are. accus- 
tomed to Pall Mall, Clubs &c. wouldn't like it. Mudie 
finds one out easily: and the London Library too: and 
altogether I can't complain of not getting such drowsy 
Books as I want. Hakluyt lasted a long while: then 
came Captain Cook, whom I hadn't read since I was a 
Boy, and whom I was very glad to see again. But he 
soon evaporates in his large Type Quartos. I can hardly 
manage Emerson Tennent's Ceylon : a very dry Cata- 
logue Raisonee of the Place. A little Essay of DeQuin- 
cey's gave me a better idea of it (as I suppose) in some 
tw^enty or thirty pages. Anyhow, I prefer Lowestoft, con- 
sidering the Snakes, Sandleaches, Mosquitos &c, I sup- 
pose Russell's Indian Diary is over-coloured: but I feel 
sure it's true in the main: and he has the Art to make 
one feel in the thick of it; quite enough in the Thick, 
however. Sir C. Napier came here to try and get the 
Beachmen to enlist in the Naval Reserve. Not one would 
go: they won't give up their Independence: and so really 
half starve here during Winter. Then Spring comes and 
they go and catch the Herrings which, if left alone, 
w^ould multiply by millions by Autumn: and so kill their 
Golden Goose. They are a strange set of Fellows. I 
think a Law ought to be made against their Spring 
Fishing : more important, for their own sakes, than Game 
Laws. 

I laid out half a crow^n on your Eraser : and liked much 
of it very much: especially the Beginning about the 
Advantage the Novelist has over the Playwriter. A little 
too much always about Miss Austen, whom yet I think 
quite capital in a Circle I have found quite unendurable 
to walk in. Thackeray's first Number was famous I 
thought : his own little Roundabout Paper so pleasant : but 



318 EDWARD FITZGERALD [^t. 54 

the Second Number; I say, lets the Cockney in already: 
about Hogarth: Lewes is vulgar: and I don't think one 
can care much for Thackeray's Novel.* He is always 
talking so of himself, too. I have been very glad to 
find I could take to a Novel again, in Trollope's Bar- 
chester Towers &c. : not perfect, like Miss jiusten: but 
then so much wider Scope: and perfect enough to make 
me feel I know the People though caricatured or care- 
lessly drawn. I doubt if you can read my writing here: 
or whether it will be worth your Pains to do so. If you 
can, or can not, one Day write me a Line which I will 
read. I suppose when the Fields and Hedges begin to 
grow green I shall move a little further inland to be 
among them. 



[^t. 54] To W. B. DoNXE 

["my sew boat"] 

Market Hill, Woodbridge, 

Sat., July 18, '63. 
j\fij dear Donne, — 

... I can hardly tell you whether I am. much pleased 
with my new Boat; for I hardly know myself. She is 
(as I doubted would be from the first) rather awkward 
in our narrow River; but then she was to be a good 
Sea-boat; and I don't know but she is; and will be better 
in all ways w^hen we have got her in proper trim. Yes- 
terday we gave her what they call "a tuning'' in a rather 
heavy swell round Orford Ness: and she did well without 
a reef &c. But, now all is got, I don't any the more 
want to go far away by Sea, any more than by Land; 
having no curiosity left for other Places, and glad to 
get back to my own Chair and Bed after three or four 
Days' Absence. So long as I get on the Sea from time 
to time, it is much the same to me whether off Aldbro' 
or Penzance. And I find I can't sleep so well on board 
as I used to do thirty years ago: and not to get one's 
Sleep, you know, indisposes one more or less for the 
Day. However, we talk of Dover, Folkestone, Holland 
&c. which will give one's sleeping Talents a tuning. 

* The Vircjinians. 



^t. 54] EDWARD FITZGERALD 319 

[^t. 54] 

To George Crabbe 
[an unsatisfactory trip to Holland] 

WooDBRiDGE, August 4, [1863.] 
My dear George, — 

I have at last done my Holland : you won't be surprised 
to hear that I did it in two days, and was too glad to 
rush home on the first pretence, after (as usual) seeing 
nothing I cared the least about. The Country itself I 
had seen long before in Dutch Pictures, and between 
Beccles and Norwich: the Towns I had seen in Pictur- 
esque Annuals, Drop Scenes &c. 

But the Pictures — the Pictures — themselves? 

Well, you know how I am sure to mismanage: but you 
will hardly believe, even of me, that I never saw what 
was most worth seeing, the Hague Gallery! But so it 
was : had I been by myself, I should have gone off directly 
(after landing at Rotterdam) to that: but Mr. Manby 
was with me : and he thought best to see about Rotterdam 
first: which was last Thursday, at whose earliest Dawn 
we arrived. So we tore about in an open Cab: saw 
nothing: the Gallery not worth a visit: and at night I 
was half dead with weariness. Then again on Friday I, 
by myself, should have started for the Hague: but as 
Amsterdam was also to be done, we thought best to go 
there (as furthest) first. So we went: tore about the 
town in a Cab as before: and I raced through the Mu- 
seum seeing (I must say) little better than what I have 
seen over and over again in England. I couldn't admire 
the Night-watch much: Van der Heist's very good pic- 
ture seemed to me to have been cleaned: I thought the 
Rembrandt Burgomasters worth all the rest put together. 
But I certainly looked very flimsily at all. 

Well, all this done, away we went to the Hague: ar- 
riving there just as the Museum closed for that day; 
next Day (Saturday) it was not to be open at all (I 
having proposed to wait in case it should), and on Sun- 
day only from 12 to 2. Hearing all this, in Rage and 
Despair I tore back to Rotterdam: and on Saturday 
Morning got the Boat out of the muddy Canal in which 
she lay and tore back down the Maas &c. so as to reach 



320 EDWAED FITZGEKALD [^.t. 54 

dear old Bawdsey shortly after S-unday's Sunrise. Oh my 
delight when I heard them call out "Orford Lights!" as 
the Boat was plunging over the Swell. 

All this is very stupid, really wrong: but you are not 
surprised at it in me. One reason however of my I)is- 
gust was, that we (in our Boat) were shut up (as I said) 
in the Canal, where I couldn't breathe. I begged Mr. 
Manby to let me take him to an Inn: he would stick to 
his Ship, he said: and I didn't like to leave him. Then 
it was Murray who misled me about the Hague Gallery: 
he knew^ nothing about its being shut on Saturdays. Then 
again we neither of us knew a word of Dutch: and I 
was surprised how little was known of English in return. 

But I shall say no more. I think it is the last foreign 
Travel I shall ever undertake; unless I should go with 
you to see the Dresden Madonna : to which there is one 
less impediment now Holland is not to be gone through. 
. . . I am the Colour of a Lobster with Sea-faring: and 
my eyes smart: so Good-bye. Let me hear of you. Ever 
yours, E. F. G. 

Oh dear! — Rembrandt's Dissection — where and how did 
I miss that? 



[^t. 54] 

To Samuel Laurence 
[death of Thackeray] 

Market Hill: Woodbridge, 

Jan. 7, '64. 
Dear Laurence, — , 

... I want to know about your two Portraits of Thack- 
eray: the first one (which I think Smith and Elder have) 
I know by the print: I want to know about one you last 
did (some two years ago?) whether you think it as good 
and characteristic: and also who has it. Frederic Tenny- 
son sent me a photograph of W. M. T. old, white, massive, 
and melancholy, sitting in his Library. 

I am surprized almost to find how much I am thinking 
of him : so little as I had seen him for the last ten years ; 
not once for the last five. I had been told — by you, for 
one— that he was spoiled. I am glad therefore that I 



^t. 66] EDWARD FITZGERALD 321 

have scarce seen him since he was "old Thackeray." I 
keep reading his Newcomes of nights, and as it were 
hear him saying so much in it; and it seems to me as if 
he might be coming up my Stairs, and about to come 
(singing) into my Room, as in old Charlotte Street &c. 
thirty years ago. 



L^t. 66] 

To C. E. Norton 
["scolding all the world"; American writers] 

Little Grange, Woodbridge, 

Jan. 23, 76. 
My dear Sir, — 

I suppose you may see one of the Carlyle Medallions: 
and you can judge better of the likeness than I, who 
have not been to Chelsea, and hardly out of Suffolk, 
these fifteen years and more. I dare say it is like him: 
but his Profile is not his best phase. In two notes dic- 
tated by him since that Business he has not adverted to 
it : I think he must be a little ashamed of it, though it 
would not do to say so in return, I suppose. And yet 
I think he might have declined the Honours of a Life of 
"Heroism." I have no doubt he would have played a 
Brave Man's Part if called on; but, meanwhile, he has 
only sat pretty comfortably at Chelsea, scolding all the 
world for not being Heroic, and not always very precise 
in telling them how. He has, however, been so far 
heroic, as to be always independent, whether of Wealth, 
Rank, and Coteries of all sorts : nay, apt to fly in the 
face of some who courted him. I suppose he is changed, 
or subdued, at eighty; but up to the last ten years he 
seemed to me just the same as when I first knew him 
five and thirty years ago. What a Fortune he might 
have made by showing himself about as a Lecturer, as 
Thackeray and Dickens did; I don't mean they did it 
for Vanity : but to make money : and that to spend 
generously. Carlyle did indeed lecture near forty years 
ago before he was a Lion to be shown, and when he had 
but few Readers. I heard his "Heroes" which now seems 
to me one of his best Books. He looked very handsome 



322 EDWAKD FITZGEEALD [/Et. 66 

then, with his black hair, fine Eyes, and a sort of cruci- 
fied Expression. 

I know of course (in Books) several of those you name 
in your Letter: Longfellow, whom I may say I love, and 
so (I see) can't call him Mister: and Emerson whom I 
admire, for I don't feel that I know the Philosopher so 
well as the Poet: and Mr. Lowell's "Among- my Books" 
is among mine. I have always much liked, I think 
rather loved, O. W. Holmes. I scarce know why I could 
never take to that man of true Genius, Hawthorne. 
There is a little of my Confession of Faith about your 
Countrymen, and I should say mine, if I were not more 
Irish than English. 



[.Et. Q6] 

To C. E. Norton 

[a suggestion for loavell; "daddy avordsavorth"] 

[WooDBRiDGE, Feb. 7, '76.] 
My dear Sir, — 

I will not look on the Book you have sent me as any 
Keturn for the Booklet I sent you, but as a free and 
kindly Gift. I really don't know that you could have 
sent me a better. I have read it with more continuous 
attention and gratification than I now usually feel, and 
always (as Lamb suggested) well disposed to say Grace 
after reading. 

Seeing what Mr. Lowell has done for Dante, Eousseau, 
&c., one does not wish him to be limited in his Subjects: 
but I do wish he would do for English Writers what Ste. 
Beuve has done for French. Mr. Lowell so far goes 
along with him as to give so much of each Writer's 
Life as may illustrate his Writings; he has more humour 
(in which alone I fancy S. B. somewhat wanting), more 
extensive reading, I suppose; and a power of metaphor- 
ical Hlustration which (if I may say so) seems to me 
to want only a little reserve in its use: as was the case 
perhaps with Hazlitt. But Mr. Lowell is not biassed 
by Hazlitt's — (by anybody's, so far as I see) — party or 
personal prejudices ; and altogether seems to me the man 
most fitted to do this Good Work, where it has not (as 



Mt. 66] EDWARD FITZGERALD 323 

with Carlyle's Johnson) been done, for good and all, 
before. Of course, one only wants the Great Men, in 
their kind: Chaucer, Pope (Dryden being done), and 
perhaps some of the "minora sidera" clustered together, 
as Hazlitt has done them. Perhaps all this will come 
forth in some future Series even now gathering in Mr. 
Lowell's Head. However that may be, this present Series 
will make me return to some whom I have not lately 
looked up. Dante's face I have not seen these ten 
years: only his Back on my Book Shelf. What Mr. 
Lowell says of him recalled to me what Tennyson said 
to me some thirty-five or forty years ago. We were 
stopping before a shop in Regent Street where were two 
Figures of Dante and Goethe. I (I suppose) said, 
"What is there in old Dante's Face that is missing in 
Goethe's?" And Tennyson (whose Profile then had cer- 
tainly a remarkable likeness to Dante's) said: "The 
Divine." Then Milton; I don't think I've read him these 
forty years; the whole Scheme of the Poem, and certain 
Parts of it, looming as grand as anything in my Mem- 
ory; but I never could read ten lines together without 
stumbling at some Pedantry that tipped me at once out 
of Paradise, or even Hell, into the Schoolroom, worse 
than either. Tennyson again used to say that the two 
grandest of all Similes were those of the Ships hanging 
in the Air, and "the Gunpowder one," which he used 
slowly and grimly to enact, in the Days that are no more. 
He certainly then thought Milton the sublimest of all 
the Gang; his Diction modelled on Virgil, as perhaps 
Dante's. 

Spenser I never could get on with, and (spite of Mr. 
Lowell's good word) shall still content myself with such 
delightful Quotations from him as one lights upon here 
and there: the last from Mr. Lowell. 

Then, old "Daddy Wordsworth," as he was sometimes 
called, I am afraid, from my Christening, he is now, I 
suppose, passing under the Eclipse consequent on the 
Glory which followed his obscure Rise. I remember fifty 
years ago at our Cambridge, when the Battle was fighting 
for him by the Few against the Many of us who only 
laughed at "Louisa in the Shade" &c. His Brother was 
then Master of Trinity College; like all Wordsworths 



324 EDWAED FITZGEKALD [^t. 66 

(unless the drowned Sailor) pompous and priggish. He 
used to drawl out the Chapel responses so that we called 
him the "Meeserable Sinner" and his brother the "Mees- 
erable Poet." Poor fun enough: but I never can forgive 
the Lakers all who first despised and then patronized 
"Walter Scott," as they loftily called him: and He, 
dear, noble, Fellow, thought they were quite justified. 
Well, your Emerson has done him far more Justice than 
his own Countryman Carlyle, w^ho won't allow him to be 
a Hero in any way, but sets up such a cantankerous 
narrow-minded Bigot as John Knox in his stead. I did 
go to worship at Abbotsford, as to Stratford on Avon: 
and saw that it was good to have so done. If you, if 
Mr. Lowell, have not lately read it, pray read Lockhart's 
account of his Journey to Douglas Dale on (I think) 
July 18 or 19, 1831. It is a piece of Tragedy, even to 
the muttering Thunder, like the Lammermuir, which does 
not look very small beside Peter Bell and Co. 

My dear Sir, this is a desperate Letter; and that last 
Sentence will lead to another dirty little Story about 
my Daddy: to which you must listen or I should feel 
like the Fine Lady in one of Vanburgh's Plays, "Oh my 
God, that you won't listen to a Woman of Quality when 
her Heart is bursting with Malice!" And perhaps you 
on the other Side of the Great Water may be amused 
with a little of your old Granny's Gossip. 

Well then : about 1826, or 7, Professor Airy (now our 
Astronomer Royal) and his brother William called on 
The Daddy at Rydal. In the course of Conversation 
Daddy mentioned that sometimes when genteel Parties 
came to visit him, he contrived to slip out of the room, 
and down the garden walk to where "The Party's" trav- 
elling Carriage stood. This Carriage he would look in.to 
to see what Books they carried with them : and he ob- 
served it was generally "Walter Scott's." It was Airy's 
Brother (a very veracious man, and an Admirer of 
Wordsworth, but, to be sure, more of Sir Walter) who 
told me this. It is this conceit that diminishes Words- 
worth's stature among us, in spite of the mountain Mists 
he lived among. Also, a little stinginess; not like Sir 
Walter in that! I remember Hartley Coleridge telling 
us at Ambleside how Professor Wilson and some one 



.EL 68] EDWAKD FITZGEEALD 325 

else (H. C. himself perhaps) stole a Leg of Mutton from 
Wordsworth's Larder for the fun of the Thing, 

Here then is a long Letter of old world Gossip from 
the old Home. I hope it won't tire you out: it need 
not, you know. 

P.S. — By way of something better from the old World, 
I post you Hazlitt's own Copy of his English Poets, 
with a few of his marks for another Edition in it. If 
you like to keep it, pray do: if you like better to give 
it to Hazlitt's successor, Mr. Lowell, do that from 
yourself. 

[^t. 68] 

To J. K. Lowell 
[keats axd CATULLUS; scott's novels] 

Little Grange, Woodbridge, 

February 28, '78. 
My dear Sir, — 

I ventured to send you Keats' Love Letters to Miss 

Brawnel a name in which there is much, as you 

say of his, and other names. . . . Well, I thought you 
might — must — wish to see these Letters, and, may be, 
not get them so readily in Spain. So I made bold. 
The Letters, I doubt not, are genuine: whether rightly 
or wrongly published I can't say: only I, for one, am 
glad of them. I had just been hammering out some notes 
on Catullus, by our Cambridge Munro, Editor of Lucre- 
tius, which you ought to have; English Notes to both, 
and the Prose Version of Lucretius quite readable by 
itself. Well, when Keats came, I scarce felt a change 
from Catullus : both such fiery Souls as wore out their 
Bodies early; and I can even imagine Keats writing 
such filthy Libels against anyone he had a spite against, 
even Armitage Brown, had Keats lived two thousand 
years ago. . . . 

I had a kind letter lately from Mr. Norton: and have 
just posted him some Carlyle letters about that Squire 
business. If you return to America before very long 
you will find them there. How long is your official Stay 
in Spain? Limited, or Unlimited? By the by of Carlyle, 
I heard from his Niece some weeks ago that he had been 



326 EDWARD FITZGERALD [iEt. 68 

poorly: but, when she wrote, himself again: only taking 
his daily walk in a Carriage, and sitting up till past 
Midnight with his Books, in spite of Warnings to Bed. 
As old Voltaire said to his Niece on like occasion, 
"Qu'est^ ce que cela fait si je m'amuse?" I have from 
Mudie *a sensible dull Book of Letters from a Miss 
Wynn: with this one good thing in it. She has been 
to visit Carlyle in 1845; he has just been to visit Bishop 
Thirlwall in Wales, and duly attended Morning Chapel, 
as a Bishop's Guest should. "It was very well done; it 
was like so many Souls pouring in through all the Doors 
to offer their orisons to God who sent them on Earth. 
We were no longer Men, and had nothing to do with 
Men's usages; and, after it was all over, all those Souls 
seemed to disperse again silent into Space. And not till 
we all met afterward in the common Room, came the 
Human Greetings and Civilities." This is, I think, a 
little piece worth sending to Madrid; I am sure, the best 
I have to oifer. 

I have had read to me of nights some of Sir Walter's 
Scotch Novels; Waverley, Rob, Midlothian, now the An- 
tiquary : eking them out as charily as I may. For I feel, 
in parting with each, as parting with an old Friend whom 
I may never see again. Plenty of dull, and even some 
bad, I know: but parts so admirable, and the Whole so 
delightful. It is wonderful how he sows the seed of his 
Story from the very beginning, and in what seems barren 
ground: but all comes up in due course, and there is the 
whole beautiful Story at last. I think all this Fore-cast 
is to be read in Scott's shrewd, humorous. Face: as one 
sees it in Chantrey's Bust; and as he seems meditating 
on his Edinburgh Monument. I feel a wish to see that, 
and Abbotsford again: taking a look at Dunbar by the 
way: but I suppose I shall get no further than Dunwich. 

Some one (not you) sent me your Moosehead Journal: 
but I told Mr. Norton I should tell you, if I wrote, 
that I did not like the Style of it at all; all "too clever 
by half." Do you not say -so yourself after Cervantes, 
Scott, Montaigne, &c. ? I don't know I ought to say 
all this to you: but you can well afford to be told it 
by one of far more authority than yours most sincerely 

E. FitzGerald. 



^t. 69] EDWAKD FITZGEKALD 327 

[^t. 69] 

To C. E. Norton 
[keats^s "letters"; "restoring" churches] 

WooDBRiDGE, April 4, 1878. 
Ml/ dear Norton, — 

I wish you would not impose on yourself to write me 
a letter; w^hich you say is "in your head." You have 
Literary work, and a Family to enjoy with you what 
spare time your Professional Studies leave you. Whereas 
I have nothing of any sort that I am engaged to do: 
all alone for months together: taking up such Books as 
I please : and rather liking to write Letters to my Friends, 
whom I now only communicate with by such means. 
And very few of my oldest Friends, here in England, 
care to answer me, though I know from no want of 
Regard: but I know that few sensible men, who have 
their own occupations, care to write Letters unless on 
some special purpose; and I now rarely get more than 
one yearly Letter from each. Seeing which, indeed, I 
now rarely trouble them for more. So pray be at ease 
in this respect: you have written to me, as I to you, 
more than has passed between myself and my fifty years 
old Friends for some years past. I have had two notes 
from you quite lately: one to tell me that Squire reached 
you; and another that he was on his way back here. I 
was in no hurry for him, knowing that, if he got safe 
into your hands, he would continue there as safe as in 
my own. I also had your two Copies of Olympia: one 
of which I sent to Cowell, who is also always too busy 
to write to me, except about twice a year, in his Holy- 
days. 

I am quite content to take History as you do, that 
is, as the Squire-Carlyle presents it to us; not looking 
the Gift Horse in the Mouth. Also, I am sure you are 
quite right about the Keats' Letters. I hope I should 
have revolted from the Book had anything in it de- 
tracted from the man : but all seemed to me in his favour, 
and therefore I did not feel I did wrong in having the 
secret of that heart opened to me. I hope Mr. Lowell 
will not resent my thinking he might so far sympathize 
with me. In fact, could he, could you, resist taking up, 



328 EDWAED FITZGERALD [.Et. 69 

and reading, the Letters, however doubtful their publi- 
cation might have seemed to your Conscience? 

Now I enclose you a little work of mine which I hope 
does no irreverence to the Man it talks of. It is meant 
quite otherwise. I often got puzzled, in reading Lamb's 
Letters, about some Data in his Life' to which the 
Letters referred: so I drew up the enclosed for my 
own behoof, and then thought that others might be glad 
of it also.. If I set down his Miseries, and the one Failing 
for which those Miseries are such a Justification, I only 
set down what has been long and publickly known, and 
what, except in a Noodle's eyes, must enhance the dear 
Fellow's character, instead of lessening it. "Saint 
Charles!" said Thackeray to me thirty years ago, put- 
ting one of C. L.'s letters to his forehead; and old 
Wordsworth said of him: "If there be a Good Man, 
Charles Lamb is one." 

I have been interested in the Memoir and Letters of 
C. Sumner: a thoroughly sincere, able, and (I should 
think) affectionate man to a few; without humour, I 
suppose, or much artistic Feeling. You might like to 
look over a slight, and probably partial, Memoir of A. 
de Musset, by his Brother, who (whether well or ill) 
leaves out the Absinthe, which is generally supposed to 
have shortened the Life of that man of Genius. Think 
of Clarissa being one of his favorite Books; he could 
not endure the modern Parisian Romance. It reminded 
me of our Tennyson (who has some likeness, "mutatis 
mutandis" of French Morals, Absinthe, &c., to the French- 
man) — of his once saying to me of Clarissa, "I love those 
large, still, Books." 

I parted from Doudan with regret; that is, from two 
volumes of him ; all I had : but I think I see four quoted. 
That is pretty, his writing to his Brother, who is dwell- 
ing (1870-1) in some fortified Town, on whose ramparts, 
now mounted with cannon, "I used to gather Violets." 
And I cannot forget what he says to a Friend at that 
crisis, "Engage in some long course of Study to drown 
Trouble in": and he quotes Ste. Beuve saying, one long 
Summer Day in the Country, "Lisons tout Madame de 
Sevigne." You may have to advise me to some such 



JEt. 72] EDWARD FITZGERALD 329 

course before long. I will avoid speaking, or, so far as 
I can, thinking, of what I cannot prevent, or alter. 

You say you like my Letters: which I say is liking 
what comes from this old Country, more yours than 
mine. I have heard that some of your People would 
even secure a Brick, or Stone, from some old Church 
here to imbed in some new Church a-building over the 
Atlantic. Plenty of such materials might be had, for 
this foolish People are restoring, and rebuilding, old Vil- 
lage Churches that have grown together in their Fields 
for Centuries. Only yesterday I wrote to decline helping 
such a work on a poor little Church I remember these 
sixty years. Well, you like my Letters; I think there 
is too much of this one; but I will end, as I believe I 
began, in praying you not to be at any trouble in an- 
swering it, or any other, from 

Yours sincerely, 

E. F. G. 

Pray read the Scene at Mrs. McCandlish's Inn when 
Colonel Mannering returns from India to Ellangowan. 
It is Shakespeare. 

WooDBRiDGE, April 16, 1878. 
Only a word; to say that yesterday came Squire- 
Carlyle from you: and a kind long letter from Mr. 
Lowell: and — and the first Nightingale, who sang in 
my Garden the same song as in Shakespeare's days: and, 
before the Day had closed, Dandie Dinmont came into 
my room on his visit to young Bertram in Portanferry 
Gaol-house. 



[Mt. 72] 

To W. F. Pollock 

[JAMES SPEDDING] 

[1881.] 

My dear PollocJc, — 

Thank you for your kind Letter; which I forwarded, 
with its enclosure to Thompson, as you desired. 

If Spedding's Letters, or parts of them, would not suit 
the Public, they would surely be a very welcome treasure 



330 EDWAED FITZGEKALD [^t. 72 

to his Friends. Two or three pages of Biography would 
be enough to introduce them to those who knew him 
less long and less intimately than ourselves: and all who 
read would be the better, and the happier, for reading 
them. 

I am surprised to find how much I dwell upon the 
thought of him, considering that I had not refreshed my 
Memory with the sight or sound of him for more than 
twenty years. But all tlie past (before that) comes upon 
me: I cannot help thinking of him while I wake; and 
when I do wake from Sleep, I have a feeling of some- 
thing lost, as in a dream, and it is J. S. 

I suppose that Carlyle amused himself, after just 
losing' his Wife, with the Kecords he has left: what he 
says of her seems a sort of penitential glorification: what, 
of others, just enough in general: but in neither case 
to be made public, and so immediately after his Decease. 
... I keep wondering what J. S. would have said on 
the matter: but I cannot ask him now, as I might have 
done a month ago. . . . 

Dear old Jem! His loss makes one's Life more dreary, 
and "en revanche" the end of it less regretful. 

[^.t. 72] 

To H. ScHUTz Wilson 

[PERSIAN poets] 

[1 March, 1882.] 
My dear Sir, — 

I must thank you sincerely for your thoughts about 
Salaman, in which I recognize a good will toward the 
Translator, as well as liking for his work. 

Of course your praise could not but help that on: 
but I scarce think that it is of a kind to profit so far 
by any review as to make it worth the expense of Time 
and Talent you might bestow upon it. In Omar's case 
it was different : he sang, in an acceptable way it 
seems, of what all men feel in their hearts, but had not 
had exprest in verse before: Jami tells of what every- 
body knows, under cover of a not very skilful Allegory. 
I have undoubtedly improved the whole by boiling it down 
to about a Quarter of its original size; and there are 



Mt 72] EDWAED FITZGEEALD 331 

many pretty things in it, though the blank Verse is too 
Hiltonic for Oriental style. 

All this considered, why did I ever meddle with it? 
Why, it was the first Persian Poem I read, with my 
friend Edward Cowell, near on forty years ago: and I 
was so well pleased with it then (and now think it al- 
most the best of the Persian Poems I have read or heard 
about), that I published my Version of it in 1856 (I 
think) with Parker of the Strand. When Parker dis- 
appeared, my unsold copies, many more than of the sold, 
were returned to me; some of which, if not all, I gave to 
little Quaritch, who, I believe, trumpeted them off to 
some little profit: and I thought no more of them. 

But some six or seven years ago that Sheikh of mine, 
Edward Cowell, who liked the Version better than any one 
else, wished it to be reprinted. So I took it in hand, 
boiled it down to three-fourths of what it originally was, 
and (as you say) clapt it on the back of Omar, where 
I still believed it would hang somewhat of a dead weight; 
but that was Quaritch's look-out, not mine. I have never 
heard of any notice taken of it, but just now from you: 
and I believe that, say what you would, people would 
rather have the old Sinner alone. Therefore it is that 
I write all this to you. I doubt not that any of yor.r 
Editors would accept an Article from you on the Sub- 
ject, but I believe also they would much prefer one on 
many another Subject: and so probably with the Public 
whom you write for. 

Thus "liberavi animam meam" for your behoof, as I 
am rightly bound to do in return for your Goodwill 
to me. 

x^s to the iDublication of my name, I believe I could 
well dispense with it; were it other and better than 
it is. But I have some unpleasant associations with it: 
not the least of them being that it was borne, Christian 
and Surname, by a man who left College just when I 
went there. . . . What has become of him I know not: 
but he, among other causes, has made me dislike my 
name, and made me sign myself (half in fun, of course,) 
to my friends, as now I do to you, sincerely yours, 

(The Laird of) Littlegrange 
where I date from. 



332 EDWAKD FITZGEKALD [^t. 74 

[^t. 74] 

To C. E. Norton 

[CARLYLE ; ballads] 

WooDBRiDGE, May 12, '83. 
My dear Norton, — 

Your Emerson-Carlyle of course interested me very 
much, as I believe a large public also. I had most to 
learn of Emerson, and that all good: but Carlyle came 
out in somewhat of a new light to me also. Now we 
have him in his Jane's letters, as we had seen some- 
thing of him before in the Reminiscences: but a yet 
more tragic story; so tragic that I know not if it ought 
not to have been withheld from the Public : assuredly 
it seems to me, ought to have been but half of the 
whole it now is. But I do not the less recognize Carlyle 
for more admirable than before — if for no other reason 
than his thus furnishing the world with weapons against 
himself which the World in general is glad to turn 
against him. . . . 

And, by way of finishing what I have to say on Car- 
lyle for the present, I will tell you that I had to go up 
to our huge, hideous, London a week ago, on disagree- 
able business: which Business, however, I got over in 
time for me to run to Chelsea before I returned home at 
Evening. I wanted to see the Statue on the Chelsea 
Embankment which I had not yet seen: and the old 
No. 5 of Cheyne Row, which I had not seen for five 
and twenty years. The Statue I thought very good, 
though looking somewhat small and ill set-oif by its 
dingy surroundings. And No. 5 (now 24), which had 
cost her so much of her life, one may say, to make habi- 
table for him, now all neglected, unswept, ungarnished, 
uninhabited 



TO LET. 



I cannot get it out of my head, the tarnished Scene of 
the Tragedy (one must call it) there enacted. 

Well, I was glad to get away from it, and the London 
of which it was a small part, and get down here to my 



^t 46] ALFKED LOKD TENNYSON 333 

own dull home, and by no means sorry not to be a 
Genius at such a Cost. "Parlous d'autres choses." 

I got our Woodbridge Bookseller to enquire for your 
Mr. Child's Ballad-book; but could only hear, and in- 
deed be shown a specimen, of a large Quarto Edition, 
de luxe I believe, and would not meddle with that. I do 
not love any unwieldy Book, even a Dictionary; and I 
believe that I am contented enough with such Knowl- 
edge as I have of the old Ballads in many a handy Edi- 
tion. Not but I admire Mr. Child for such an under- 
taking as his; but I think his Book will be more for 
Great Libraries, Public or Private, than for my scanty 
Shelves at my age of seventy-five. I have already given 
away to Friends all that I had of any rarity or value, 
especially if over octavo. 

By the way there was one good observation, I think, 
in Mrs. Oliphant's superficial, or hasty, History of Eng- 
lish 18th Century Literature, viz., that when the Beatties, 
Blacks, and other recognized Poets of the Day were all 
writing in a "classical" way, and tried to persuade Burns 
to do the like, it was certain Old Ladies who wrote so 
many of the Ballads, which, many of them, have passed 
as ancient, "Sir Patrick Spence" for one, I think. 

Our Spring fiowers have been almost all spoilt by Win- 
ter weather, and the Trees before my window only just 
now beginning to 

"Stand in a mist of Green," 

as Tennyson sings. Let us hope their Verdure, late ar- 
rayed, will last the longer. I continue pretty well, with 
occasional reminders from Bronchitis, who is my estab- 
lished Brownie. 

[^t. 46] ALFRED LORD TENNYSON 

1809-1892 

To John Forster 

["the charge of the light brigade"] 

[1855] 
My dear Forster, 

In the first place thanks for your critique, which seems 
to me good and judicious. Many thanks, my wife will 



334 ALFEED LORD TENNYSON [.Et. 46 

write to you about it; but what I am writing to you 
now about is a matter which interests me very much. 
My friend Chapman of 3, Stone Buildings, Lincohi's. 
Inn, writes to me thus: — "An acquaintance of mine in 
the department of the S. P. G. as he calls it (Society 
for the Propagation of the Gospel) was saying how a 
chaplain in the Crimea sent by the Society writes to the 
Society — (neither he nor the Society being suspected of 
any Tennysonian prejudices) — 'The greatest service you 
can do just now is to send out on printed slips Mr. A. T.'s 
"Charge at Balaclava." It is the greatest favourite of 
the soldiers — half are singing it, and all want to have it 
in black and white, so as to read what has so taken 
them.' " 

Now, my dear Forster, you see I cannot possibly be 
deaf to such an appeal. I wish to send out about 1000 
slips, and I don't at all want the S. P. G. or any one to 
send out the version last printed: it would, I believe, 
quite disappoint the soldiers. Don't you live quite close 
to the S. P. G. ? Could you not send Henry over to say 
that / am sending over the soldiers' version of my ballad, 
and beg them not to stir in the matter? The soldiers are 
the best critics in what pleases them. I send you a copy 
which retains the "Light Brigade," and the "blunder'd"; 
and I declare it is the best of the two, and that the criti- 
cism of two or three London friends (not yours) induced 
me to spoil it. For Heaven's sake get this copy fairly 
printed at once, and sent out. I have sent it by this post 
likewise to Moxon, but you are closer to your printer. 
Concoct with him how it is all to be managed: I am so 
sorry that I am not in town to have done it at once. I 
have written a little note to the soldiers which need not 
be sent — just as you like. It might be merely printed 
"From A. Tennyson." Please see to all this: and see 
that there are no mistakes; and I will be bound to you 
for evermore, and more than ever yours in great haste, 

A. Tennyson. 

P.S. I am convinced now after writing it out that 
this is the best version. 



/Kt. oOj ALFRED LOKD TExNNYSON 335 

[^t. 50] 

To William Makepeace Thackeray 
[thanks for appreciation] 

Farringford, 
[1859] 
My dear Thacheray, 

Should I not have answered you ere this 6th of No- 
vember? surely: what excuse? none that I know of: ex- 
cept indeed, that perhaps your very generosity and 
boundlessness of approval made me in a measure shame- 
faced. I could scarcely accept it, being, I fancy, a modest 
man, and always more or less doubtful of my own eflorts 
in any line. But I may tell you that your little note 
gave me more pleasure than all the journals and month- 
lies and quarterlies which have come across me: not so 
much from your being the Great Novelist, I hope, as 
from your being my good old friend, or perhaps from 
your being both of these in one. Well, let it be. I have 
been ransacking all sorts of old albums and scrap books 
but cannot find anything worthy sending you. Unfortu- 
nately before your letter arrived I had agreed to give 
Macmillan the only available poem 1 had by me ("Sea 
Dreams")- I don't think he would have got it (for I 
dislike publishing in magazines) except that he had come 
to visit me in my Island, and was sitting and blowing 
his weed vis-a-vis. I am sorry that you have engaged 
for any quantity of money to let your brains be sucked 
periodically by Smith, Elder & Co.: not that I don't like 
Smith, who seems from the very little I have seen of him, 
liberal and kindly, but that so great an artist as you are 
should go to work after this fashion. Whenever you 
feel your brains as the "remainder biscuit," or indeed 
whenever you will, come over to me and take a blow on 
these downs where the air as Keats said is "worth six- 
pence a pint," and bring your girls too. 

Yours always, 
A. Tennyson. 



[^t. 52] OLIVEK WENDELL HOLMES 

1809-1894 
To James T. Fields 
[an error of one week] 
296 Beacon Street, February 11, 1862. 
My dear Mr. Fields, — 

On Friday evening last I white-cravated myself, took 
a carriage, and found myself at your door at eight of 
the clock P.M. 

A cautious female responded to my ring, and opened 
the chained portal about as far as a clam opens his shell 
to see what is going on in Cambridge Street, where he 
is waiting for a customer. 

Her first glance impressed her with the conviction that 
I was a burglar. The mild address with which I accosted 
her removed that impression, and I rose in the moral 
scale to the. comparatively elevated position of what the 
unfeeling world calls a "sneak-thief." 

By dint, however, of soft words, and that look of in- 
genuous simplicity by which I am so well known to you 
and all my friends, I coaxed her into the belief that I 
was nothing worse than a rejected contributor, an auto- 
graph collector, an author with a volume of poems to dis- 
pose of, or other disagreeable but not dangerous char- 
acter. 

She unfastened the chain, and I stood before her. 

I calmed her fears, and she was calm 
And told 

me how you and Mrs. F. had gone to New York, and 
how she knew nothing of any literary debauch that was 
to come off under your roof, but would go and call an- 
other unprotected female who knew the past, present, 
and future, and could tell me why this was thus, that I 
had been lured from my fireside by the ig7iis fatuus of 
a deceptive invitation. 

It was my turn to be afraid, alone in the house with 
two of the stronger sex; and I retired. 

On reaching home, I read my note and found it was 
Friday the 16th, not the 9th, I was invited for. . . . 

336 



^t. 60] OLIVEK WENDELL HOLMES 337 

Dear Mr. Fields, I shall be very happy to come to your 
home on Friday evening, the 16th February, at eight 
o'clock, to meet yourself and Mrs. Fields, and hear Mr. 
James read his paper on Emerson. 



[^t. 60] 

To John Lothrop Motley 

[CHARLES FECHTER; A "nEW PRESIDENT"] 

Boston, April 3, 1870. 
My dear Motley, — 

I feel as if I must have something or other to say that 
will interest you, but what it is, if there is anything, I 
can hardly guess as yet. L'appetit vient en mangeant, 
I have no doubt, and if I can only tell you that I am 
alive and have not forgotten you, I shall perhaps feel 
better for saying it. I have been rather miserable this 
winter by reason of asthmatic tendencies, which, with- 
out preventing me from doing my work, keep me more 
or less uncomfortable, and tell me to decline my invita- 
tions for a while. I have been well enough, however, of 
late, and went to a dinner-party at Mrs. 's yester- 
day, and a kind of soiree she had after it. This good 
lady (who is a distant relation of Mrs. Leo Hunter) had 
bagged Mr. Fechter, the player, who has been turning 
the heads of the Boston women and girls with his Ham- 
lets and Claude Melnottes. A pleasant, intelligent man, 
— you may have met him or at any rate seen him, — but 
Boston furores are funny. The place is just of the right 
size for aesthetic endemics, and they spare neither age 
nor sex — among the women, that is, for we have man- 
women and woman-women here, you know. It reminds 
me of the time we had when Jefferson was here, but 
Fechter is feted off the stage as much as he is applauded 
on it. I have only seen him in Hamlet, in which he in- 
terested rather than overwhelmed me. But his talk about 
Rachel and the rest with whom he has played so much 
was mighty pleasant. 

Another sensation in a somewhat different sphere is 
our new Harvard College President. King Log has made 
room for King Stork. Mr. Eliot makes the Corporation 



338 OLIVEK WENDELL HOLMES [.Et. 60 

meet ticice a month instead of once. He comes to the 
meethig of every Faculty, ours among the rest, and keeps 
us up to eleven and twelve o'clock at night discussing 
new arrangements. He shows an extraordinary knowl- 
edge of all that relates to every department of the Uni- 
versity, and presides with an aplomb, a quiet, imper- 
turbable, serious good-humor, that it is impossible not 
to admire. We are, some of us, disposed to think that 
he is a little too much in a hurry with some of his inno- 
vations, and take care to let the Corporation know it. 
I saw three of them the other day and found that they 
were on their guard, as they all quoted that valuable 
precept, festina lente, as applicable in the premises. I 
cannot help being amused at some of the scenes we have 
in our Medical Faculty, — this cool, grave young man 
proposing in the calmest way to turn everything topsy- 
turvy, taking the reins into his hands and driving as 
if he were the first man that ever sat on the box. I say 
amused, because I do not really care much about most 
of the changes he proposes, and I look on a little as I 
would at a rather serious comedy. 

"How is it? I should like to ask," said one of our 
number the other evening, "that this Faculty has gone 
on for eighty years, managing its own affairs and doing 
it well, — for the Medical School is the most flourishing 
department connected with the college, — how is it that 
we have been going on so well in the same orderly path 
for eighty years, and now within three or four months 
it is proposed to change all our modes of carrying on 
the school — it seems very extraordinary, and I should 
like to know how it happens." 

"I can ansvvcr Dr. 's question very easily," said the 

bland, grave young man: "there is a new President." 

The tranquil assurance of this answer had an effect 
such as I hardly ever knew produced by the most elo- 
quent sentences I ever heard uttered. Eliot has a deep, 
almost melancholy sounding voice — with a little of that 
character that people's voices have when there is some- 
body lying dead in the house, but a placid smile on his 
face that looks as if it might mean a deal of determina- 
tion, perhaps of obstinacy. I have great hopes from his 
energy and devotion to his business, which he studies 



^t. 60] OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 339 

as I suppose no President ever did before; but I think 
the Corporation and Overseers will have to hold him 
in a little, or he will want to do too many things at once. 
I went to the Club last Saturday, and met some of 
the friends you always like to hear of. I sat by the 
side of Emerson, who always charms me with his de- 
licious voice, his fine sense and wit, and the delicate way 
he steps about among the words of his vocabulary, — if 
you have seen a cat picking her footsteps in wet weather, 
you have seen the picture of Emerson's exquisite intelli- 
gence, feeling for its phrase or epithet, — sometimes I 
think of an ant-eater singling out his insects, as I see 
him looking about and at last seizing his noun or ad- 
jective, — the best, the only one which would serve the 
need of his thought. 

Longfellow was there, — not in good spirits I thought 
by his looks. On talking with him I found it was so. 
He feels the tameness and want of interest of the life 
he is leading after the excitement of his European ex- 
perience, and makes no secret of it. I think the work 
of translating Dante kept him easy, and that he is rest- 
less now for want of a task. ... I hope he will find 
some pleasant literary labor for his later years, — for his 
graceful and lovely nature can hardly find expression 
in any form without giving pleasure to others, and for 
him to be idle is, I fear, to be the prey of sad memories. 

Lowell was not at the Club. I saw him at the Febru- 
ary one seeming well and in good spirits. 

Agassiz, you know, has been in a condition to cause 
very grave fears. I am happy to say that he is much 
improved of late. . . . 

I have left no room to talk of your affairs, to sympa- 
thize with your spoliation, — to say how grand we all felt 
when- we read of your famous reception of the great folks 
the other day, nor to tell you how we miss you and your 
family here in your own little city, which you must not 
forget because it looks so small in the distance. You 
like a letter from me every few months, I am sure, 
though there is not a great deal in it. You know you 
need not answer. 



340 OLIVEE WENDELL HOLMES [^t. Q6 

To James Russell Lowell 
["elders" with pith] 
296 Beacon Street, September 28, 1875. 
My dear James, — 

Two faculty meetings on Thursday of this week (Den- 
tal and Medical) which I cannot miss, and my lectures 
on the following Thursdays, keep me in Boston in de- 
spite of all temptations. I never go to any shows nowa- 
days — formerly they were autre chose — but if I did go 
to any, cattle-shows would be my favorite resort — espe- 
cially in Spain, where I understand they have very fine 
ones. At our native exhibitions I have a wonderful liking 
for looking at prize pumpkins and squashes — great fel- 
lows marked 100 lb., 120 lb., 127 lb.! and so on — the ri- 
valry excites me like a horse-race. As for fatted calves 
and the like, I am as eager for them as the prodigal son. 
The Great Cheese commonly shown comes in for a share 
of my admiration. The sampler worked by a little girl 
aged five years and three months, and the patchwork 
quilt wrought by the old lady of eighty-seven years, four 
months, and six days, receive alike my respectful atten- 
tion. I lift the dasher of the new patent churn with the 
proud feeling that I, too, am a contriver and see my un- 
patented gimcrack in every window. And the plough- 
ing-match, too — not quite so actively exciting as Epsom 
(I don't mean the salts, of course, but the race), but still 
equal to bringing on a mild glow of excitement. Yes, I 
miss a good deal in not going to the cattle-shows. 

But we missed you sadly, my dear fellow, on Saturday. 
Good and great men are getting scarce, my James, and 
you must not be trifiing in this way with your gouts and 
gastralgias. 

Do thank your son-in-law (I met him the other day 
and he showed me a photograph of one of his children, 
which was a credit to all concerned) — for complimenting 
me with a wish for my presence. 

I have been having a very pleasant vacation at Beverly, 
Nahant, and Mattapoisett, and am beginning my seven 
months' lecture course feeling quite juvenile for an el- 



^t. 37] WILLIAM M. THACKEKAY 341 

derly gentleman — however, the elders always had a good 
deal of real pith in them, I remember, in my boyish days I 
and I suppose it is so now. 



[^t. 37] 

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKEEAY 

1811-1863 

To Mrs. Brookfield 

["payne"] 

[1848.] 
My dear Mrs. Brookfield: 

Now that it is over and irremediable I am thinking 
with a sort of horror of a bad joke in the last number of 
Yanity Fair, which may perhaps annoy somebody whom 
I wouldn't wish to displease. Amelia is represented as 
having a lady's maid, and the lady's maid's name is 
Payne. I laughed when I wrote it, and thought that 
it was good fun, but now, who knows whether you and 
Payne and everybody won't be angry, and in fine, I am 
in a great tremor. The only way will be, for you I fear 
to change Payne's name to her Christian one. Pray 
don't be angry if you are, and forgive me if I have of- 
fended. You know you are only a piece of Amelia, my 
mother is another half, my poor little wife — y est pour 
heaucoup. 

and I am 
Yours most sincerely, 
W. M. Thackeray. 

I hope you will write to say that you forgive me. 

[^t. 37] 

To THE Same 

[at w^ork on "pexdenxis"] 

Erom the old shop, 21. 

[1849] 

Is it pouring with rain at Park Lodge, and the most 

dismal, wretched, cat and dog day ever seen? O! it's 

gloomy at 13 Yoimg Street! I have been labouring all 

day — drawing that is, and doing my plates, till my &s 



342 WILLIAM M. THACKERAY [iEt. 37 

are ready to drop off for weariness. But they must not 
stop for yet a little while, and until I have said how do 
you do to my dear lady and the young folks at South- 
ampton. I hardly had time to know I was gone, and 
that happy fortnight was over, till this morning. At 

the train, whom do you think I found? Miss G - 

who says she is Blanche Amory, and I think she is 
Blanche Amory; amiable at times, amusing, clever and 
depraved. We talked and persiflated all the way to Lon- 
don, and the idea of her will help me to a good chapter, 
in which I will make Pendennis and Blanche play at be- 
ing in love, such a wicked false humbugging London 
love, as two hlase London people might act, and half de- 
ceive themselves that they were in earnest. That will com- 
plete the cycle of Mr. Pen's worldly experiences, and then 
we will make, or try and make, a good man of him. O! 
me, we are wicked worldlings most of us, may God better 
us and cleanse us! 

I wonder whether ever again, I shall have such a happy 
peaceful fortnight as that last! How sunshiny the land- 
scape remains in my mind, I hope for always; and the 
smiles of dear children. ... I can hardly see as I 
write for the eye-water, but it isn't with grief, but for 
the natural pathos of the thing. How happy your dear 
regard makes me, how it takes off the solitude and eases it ; 
may it continue, pray God, till your head is white as 
mine, and our children have children of their own. In- 
stead of being unhappy because that delightful holiday 
is over or all but over, I intend that the thoughts of it 
should serve to make me only the more cheerful and 
help me, please God, to do my duty better. All such 
pleasures ought to brace and strengthen one against 
work days, and lo, here they are. I hope you will be 
immensely punctual at breakfast and dinner, and do all 
your business of life with cheerfulness and briskness, 
after the example of holy Philip Neri, whom you wot of; 
that is your duty, Madame, and mine is to "pursue my 
high calling"; and so I go back to it with a full grateful 
heart, and say God bless all. If it hadn't been pouring- 
o'-rain so, I think I should have gone off to His Rever- 
ence at Brighton; so I send him my very best regards, 
and a whole box full of kisses to the children. Farewell. 



^t. 37] WILLIAM M. THACKERAY 343 

[^t. 37] 

To THE Same 
[JULES janin; a "miss fotheringay"] 

[Paris, Feb., 1849.] 
My dear Lady: 

I have been to see a great character to-day and another 
still greater yesterday. To-day was Jules Janin, whose 
books you never read, nor do I suppose you could very 
well. He is the critic of the Journal des Debats and 
has made his weekly feuilleton famous throughout Europe. 
— He does not know a word of English, but he translated 
Sterne and I think Clarissa Harlowe. One week, having 
no theatres to describe in his feuilleton, or no other sub- 
ject handy, he described his own marriage, which took 
place in fact that week, and absolutely made a present of 
his sensations to all the European public. He has the 
most wonderful verve, humour, oddity, honesty, bon- 
homie. He was ill with the gout, or recovering perhaps; 
but bounced about the room, gesticulating, joking, gas- 
conading, quoting Latin, pulling out his books which 
are very handsome, arid tossing about his curling brown 
hair; — a magnificent jolly intelligent face such as would 
suit Pan I should think, a flood of humorous, rich, jovial 
talk. And now I have described this, how are you to 
have the least idea of him. — I daresay it is not a bit like 
him. He recommended me to read Diderot; which I 
have been reading in at his recommendation; and that 
is a remarkable sentimental cynic, too; in his way of 
thinking and suSden humours not unlike — not unlike Mr. 
Bowes of the Chatteris Theatre. I can fancy Harry 
Pendennis and him seated on the bridge and talking of 
their mutual mishaps; — no, Arthur Pendennis the boy's 
name is! I shall be forgetting my own next. But mind 
you, my similes don't go any further: and I hope you 
don't go for to fancy that you know anybody like Miss 
Fotheringay — ^you don't suppose that I think that you 
have no heart, do you? But there's many a woman who 
has none, and about whom men go crazy; — such was the 
other character I saw yesterday. We had a long talk in 
which she showed me her interior, and I inspected it 



344 WILLIAM M. THACKEKAY [.Et. 37 

and left it in a state of wonderment whicli I can't de- 
scribe. . . . 

She is kind, frank, open-handed, not very refined, with 
a warm outpouring of language; and thinks herself the 
most feeling creature in the world. The way in which 
she fascinates some people is quite extraordinary. She 
affected me by telling me of an old friend of ours in the 
country — Dr. Portman's daughter indeed, who was a 
parson in our parts — who died of consumption the other 
day after leading the purest and saintliest life, and who 
after she had received the sacrament read over her 
friend's letter and actually died with it on the bed. Ller 
husband adores her; he is an old cavalry Colonel of sixty, 
and the poor fellow away now in India, and yearning 
after her writes her yards and yards of the most tender, 
submissive, frantic letters; five or six other men are 
crazy about her. She trotted them all out, one after an- 
other before me last night; not humourously, I rnean, 
nor making fun of them; but complacently describing 
their adoration for her and acquiescing in their opinion 
of herself. Friends, lover, husband, she coaxes them all; 
and no more cares for them than worthy Miss Fother- 
ingay did. — Oh! Becky is a trifle to her; and I am sure 
I might draw her picture and she would never know in 
the least that it was herself. I suppose I did not fall in 
love with her myself because we were brought up to- 
gether; she was a very simple generous creature then. 

Tuesday. Friend came in as I was writing last night, 
perhaps in time to stop my chattering; but I am encore 
tout emerveille de ma cousine. By all the Gods! I never 
had the opportunity of inspecting such a naturalness 
and coquetry; not that I suppose that there are not many 
such women; but I have only myself known one or two 
women intimately, and I daresay the novelty would wear 
off if I knew more. I had the Revue des 2 mondes and 
the Journal des Dehats to dinner; and what do you think 
by way of a delicate attention the chef served us up? 
Mock-turtle soup again, and uncommonly good it was 
too. After dinner I went to a ball at the prefecture of 
Police; the most splendid apartments I ever saw in my 
life. Such lights, pillars, marble, hangings, carvings, 
and gildings. I am sure King Belshazzar could not have 



.^t. 37] WILLIAM M. THACKEEAY 345 

been more magnificently lodged. — There must have been 
15 hundred people, of whom I did not know one single 
soul. I am surprised that the people did not faint in 
the Saloons, which were like burning fiery furnaces; but 
there they were dancing and tripping away, ogling and 
flirting, and I suppose not finding the place a bit incon- 
veniently warm. The women were very queer looking 
bodies for the most, I thought, but the men dandies every 
one, fierce and trim with curling little mustachios. I 
felt dimly that I was 3 inches taller than any body else 
in the room but I hoped that nobody took notice of me. 
There was a rush for ices at a footman who brought 
those refreshments which was perfectly terrific. — They 
were scattered melting over the heads of the crowd as I 
ran out of it in a panic. There was an old British dow- 
ager with two daughters seated up against a wall very 
dowdy and sad, poor old lady; I wonder what she wanted 
there and whether that was what she called pleasure. I 
went to see William's old friend and mine, Bowes; he 
has forty thousand a year and palaces in the country, 
and here he is a manager of a Theatre of Varietes, and 
his talk was about actors and coulisses all the time of 
our interview. I wish it could be the last, but he has 
made me promise to dine with him, and go I must, to 
be killed by his melancholy gentlemanlikeness. I think 
that is all I did yesterday. Dear Lady, I am pained at 
your having been unwell; I thought you must have been, 
when Saturday came without any letter. There wont be 
one today I bet twopence. I am going to a .lecture at 
the Institute; a lecture on Burns by M. Chasles, who is 
professor of English literature. What a course of lion- 
izing, isn't it ? But it must stop ; for is not the month 
the shortest of months? I went to see my old haunts 
when I came to Paris 13 years ago, and made believe to 
be a painter, — just after I was ruined and before I fell 
in love and took to marriage and writing. It was a very 
jolly time, I was as poor as Job and sketched away most 
abominably, but pretty contented; and we used to meet 
in each others little rooms and talk about art and smoke 
pipes and drink bad brandy and water. — That awful 
habit still remains, but where is art, that dear mistress 
whom I loved, though in a very indolent capricious man- 



346 WILLIAM M. THACKERAY [JEt. 37 

ner, but with a real sincerity? — I see her far, very far 
otf. I jilted her, I know it very well; but you see it was 
Fate ordained that marriage should never take place; 
and forced me to take on with another lady, two other 
ladies, three other ladies; I mean the muse and my wife 
&c. &c. 

Well you are very good to listen to all this egotistic 
prattle, chere soeur, si douce et si bonne. I have no 
reason to be ashamed of my loves, seeing that all three 
are quite lawful. Did you go to see my people yester- 
day? Some day when his reverence is away, will you 
have the children? and not, if you please, be so vain as 
to fancy that you can't amuse them or that they will be 
bored in your house. They must and shall be fond of 
you, if you please. Alfred's open mouth as he looked at 
the broken bottle and spilt wine must have been a grand 
picture of agony. 

I couldn't find the lecture room at the Institute, so I 
went to the Louvre instead and took a feast with the 
statues and pictures. The Venus of Milo is the grandest 
figure of figures. The wave of the lines of the figure, 
whenever seen, fills my senses with pleasure. What is it 
which so charms, satisfies one, in certain lines ? 1 the 
man who achieved that statue was a beautiful genius. I 
have been sitting thinking of it these 10 minutes in a 
delightful sensuous rumination. The Colours of the 
Titian pictures comfort one's eyes similarly; and after 
these feasts, which wouldn't please my lady very much I 
daresay, being I should think too earthly for you, I went 
and looked at a picture I usedn't to care much for in 
old days, an angel saluting a Virgin and child by Pietro 
Cortona, — a sweet smiling angel with a lily in her hands, 
looking so tender and gentle I wished that instant to 
make a copy of it, and do it beautifully, which I can't, 
and present it to somebody on Lady-day. — There now, 
just fancy it is done, and presented in a neat compli- 
ment, and hung up in your room — a pretty piece — dainty 

and devotional? — I drove about with , and wondered 

at her more and more. — She is come to "my dearest 
William" now: though she doesn't care a fig for me. — 
She told me astonishing things, showed me a letter in 
which every word was true and which was a fib from be- 



j:t. 38] WILLIAM M. THACKEKAY 347 

ginning to end; — ^A miracle of deception; — flattered, fon- 
dled, coaxed — O ! she was worth coming to Paris for ! 
. . . Pray God to keep us simple. I have never looked 
at anything in my life which has so amazed me. Why, 
this is as good, almost, as if I had you to talk to. Let 
us go out and have another walk. 



[.Et. 38] 

To THE Same 

['^BIG HIGGIXS"] 

[1849.] 
... I am going to dine at the Berrys' to-day and to 
Lady Ashburton's at night. I dined at home three days 
running, think of that. This is my news, it isn't much 
is it? I have written a wicked number of Pendennis, 
but like it rather; it has a good moral, I believe, although 
to some it may appear naughty. Big Higgins, who dined 
with me yesterday, offered me, what do you think? "If," 
says he, "you are tired and want to lie fallow for a year, 
come to me for the money. I have much more than I 
want." Wasn't it kind? I like to hear and to tell of 
kind things. . . . 

To THE Same 
["those inimitable dickexs touches"] 

Wednesday, 1849. 
What have I been doing since these many days? I 
hardly know. I have written such a stupid number of 
Pendennis in consequence of not seeing you, that I shall 
be ruined if you are to stay away much longer. . . . 
Has William written to you about our trip to Hamp- 
stead on Sunday? It was very pleasant. We went first 
to St. Mark's church, where I always thought you went, 
but where the pew-opener had never heard of such a per- 
son as Mrs. J. O. B.; and having heard a jolly and per- 
fectly stupid sermon, walked over Primrose Hill to the 
Crowes', where His Reverence gave Mrs. Crowe half an 
hour's private talk, whilst I was talking under the blos- 
soming apple tree about newspapers to Monsieur Crowe. 
Well, Mrs. Crowe was delighted with William and his 



348 WILLIAM M. THACKERAY [^t. 38 

manner of discoorsing her; and indeed, though I say it 
that shouldn't, from what he said afterwards, and from 
what we have often talked over pipes in private, that is 
a pious and kind soul. I mean his, and calculated to 
soothe and comfort and appreciate and elevate so to speak 
out of despair, many a soul that your more tremendous, 
rigorous divines would leave on the wayside, where sin, 
that robber, had left them half killed. I will have a 
Samaritan parson when I fall among thieves. You, dear 
lady, may send for an ascetic if you like; what is he to 
find wrong in you? 

I have talked to my mother about her going to Paris 
with the children; she is very much pleased at the no- 
tion, and it won't be very lonely to me. I shall be alone 
for some months at any rate, and vow and swear I'll 
save money. . . . Have you read Dickens ? ! it is 
charming! brave Dickens! It has some of his very pret- 
tiest touches — those inimitable Dickens touches which 
make such a great man of him; and the reading of the 
book has done another author a great deal* of good. In 
the first place it pleases the other author to see that 
Dickens, who has long left off alluding to the A.'s works, 
has been copying the O. A., and greatly simplifying his 
style, and overcoming the use of fine words. By this the 
public will be the gainer and David Copperfield will be 
improved by taking a lesson from Vanity Fair. Secondly 
it has put me upon my metal; for ah! Madame, all the 
metal was out of me and I have been dreadfully and 
curiously cast down this month past. I say, secondly, it 
has put me on my metal and made me feel I must do 
something; that I have fame and name and family to 
support. . . . 

I have just come away from a dismal sight ; Gore 
House full of snobs looking at the furniture. Foul Jews; 
odious bombazine women, who drove up in mysterious 
fiys which they had hired, the wretches, to be fined, so 
as to come in state to a fashionable lounge; brutes keep- 
ing their hats on in the kind old drawing room, — I longed 
to knock some of them off, and say "Sir, be civil in a 
lady's room." . , . There was one of the servants there, 
not a powdered one, but a butler, a wliatdyoucallit. My 
heart melted towards him and I gave him a pound. Ah! 



^t. 38] WILLIAM M. THACKERAY 349 

it was a strange, sad picture of Vanity Fair. My mind 
is all boiling up with it; indeed, it is in a queer state. 
... I give my best remembrances to all at Clevedon 
Court. 



[^t. 38] 

To THE Same 
[mr. h., the widower] 

[4tli Sept., 1849] 
Tuesday, Paris. 

Perhaps by my intolerable meanness and blundering, 
you will not get any letter from me till to-morrow. On 
Sunday, the man who was to take the letter failed me; 
yesterday I went with it in a cab to. the Grande Poste, 
which is a mile off, and where you have to go to pay. 
The cab horse was lame, and we arrived two minutes too 
late; I put the letter into the unpaid-letter box; I dis- 
missed the poor old broken cab horse, behind which it 
was agonizing to sit; in fine it was a failure. 

When I got to dinner at my aunt's, I found it all was 
over. Mrs. H. died on Sunday night in her sleep, quite 
without pain, or any knowledge of the transition. I went 
and sat with her husband, an old fellow of seventy-two, 
and found him bearing his calamity in a very honest 
manly way. What do you think the old gentlemen was 
doing? Well, he was drinking gin and water, and I had 
some too, telling his valet to make me some. Man thought 
this was a master-stroke of diplomacy and evidently 
thinks I have arrived to take possession as heir, but I 
know nothing about money matters as yet, and think 
that the old gentleman at least will have the enjoyment 
of my aunt's proi^erty during life. He told me some 
family secrets, in which persons of repute figure not 
honorably. Ah! they shock one to think of. Pray, have 
you ever committed any roguery in money matters? Has 
William? Have I? I am more likely to do it than he, 
that honest man, not having his resolution or self-denial. 
But I've not as yet, beyond the roguery of not saving 
perhaps, which is knavish too. I am very glad I came 
to see my dearest old aunt. She is such a kind tender 



350 WILLIAM M. THACKERAY [^t. 38 

creature, laws bless us, how fond she would be of you. 
1 was going to begin about William and say, "do you 
remember a friend of mine who came to dine at the 
Thermos, and sang the song about the Mogul, and the 
blue-bottle fly," but modesty forbade and I was dumb. 

Since this was written in the afternoon I suppose if 
there has been one virtuous man. in Paris it is madame's 
most ohajient servant. I went to sit with Mr. H. and 
found him taking what he calls his tiffin in great com- 
fort (tiffin is the meal which I have sometimes had the 
honor of sharing with you at one o'clock) and this trans- 
acted, — and I didn't have any tiffin, having consumed 
a good breakfast two hours previously — I went up a hun- 
dred stairs at least, to Miss B. H.'s airy apartment, and 
found her and her sister, and sat for an hour. She asked 
after you so warmly that I was quite pleased; she said 
she had the highest respect for you, and I was glad to 
find somebody who knew you; and all I can say is, if 
you fancy I like- being here better than in London, you 
are in a pleasing error. 

Then I went to see a friend of my mother's, then to 
have a very good dinner at the Cafe de Paris, where I 
had pofage a la pourpart, think of pourpart soup. We 
had it merely for the sake of the name, and it was un- 
commonly good. Then back to old H. again, to bawl into 
his ears for an hour and a half; then to drink tea with 
my aunt — why, life has been a series of sacrifices today, 
and I must be written up in the book of good works. For 
I should have liked to go to the play, and follow my own 
devices best, but for that stern sentiment of duty, which 
fitfully comes over the most abandoned of men, at times. 
All the time I was with Mr. H. in the morning, what 
do you think they were doing in the next room? It was 
like a novel. They were rapping at a coffin in the bed- 
room, but he was too deaf to hear, and seems too old to 
care very much. Ah! dear lady, I hope you are sleeping 
happily at this hour, and you, and Mr. Williams, and an- 
other party who is nameless, shall have all the benefits 
of an old sinner's prayers. 

I suppose I was too virtuous on Tuesday, for yesterday 

I got back to my old selfish ways again, and did what I 

■liked from morning till night. This self indulgence 



^t. 38] WILLIAM M. THACKEKAY 351 

though entire was not criminal, at first at least, but I 
shall come to the painful part of my memoirs presently. 
All the forenoon I read with intense delight, a novel 
called Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, a ^continuation of the 
famous Mousquetaires and just as interesting, keeping 
one panting from volume to volume, and longing for 
more. This done, and after a walk and some visits, read 
more novels, Dwvid Copperfield to wit, in which theie is 
a charming bit of insanity, and which I begin to believe 
is the very best thing the author hr.s yet done. Then to 
the Varietes Theatre, to see the play Chameleon, after 
which all Paris is running, a general satire upon the last 
60 years. Everything is satirised, Louis XVI, the Con- 
vention, the Empire, the Restoration etc., the barricades, 
at which these people were murdering each other only 
yesterday — it's awful, immodest, surpasses my cynicism 
altogether. At the end of the piece th^y pretend to bring 
in the author, and a little child who caxi just speak, comes 
in and sings a satiric song, in a feebb, tender, infantine 
pipe, which seemed to me as impious as the whole of the 
rest of the piece. They don't care for anything, not re- 
ligion, not bravery, not liberty, not great men, not mod- 
esty. Ah! madame, what a great moralist somebody is, 
and what moigJity foine principles entoirely he has! 

But now, with a blush upon my damask cheek, I come 
to the adventures of the day. You must know I went to 
the play with an old comrade, Roger de Beauvoir, an ex- 
dandy and man of letters, who talked incessantly during 
the whole of dinner time, as I remember, though I can't 
for the life of me recall what he said. Well, we went to- 
gether to the play, and he took me where William would 
long to go, to the green-room. I have never been in a 
French green-room before, and was not much excited, 
but when he proposed to take me up to the loge of a 
beautiful actress with sparkling eyes and the prettiest 
little retrousse nosey-posey in the world, I said to the 
regisseiir of the theatre "lead on!" and we went through 
passages and up stairs to the loge, which is not a box, 
but O ! gracious goodness, a dressing room ! 

She had just taken oil her rouge, her complexion was 
only a thousand times more brilliant, perhaps, the peig- 
noir of black satin which partially enveloped her perfect 



352 WILLIAM M. THACKERAY {.Et. 38 

form, only served to heighten &c, which it could but 
partially do &c. Her lips are really as red as &c, and not 
covered with paint at all. Her voice is delicious, her 
eyes, O ! they flashed &c upon me, and I felt my &c, beat- 
ing so that I could hardly speak. I pitched in, if you 
will permit me the phrase, two or three compliments how- 
ever, very large and heavy, of the good old English sort, 
and O ! mon dieu, she has asked me to go and see her. 
Shall I go, or shan't I? Shall I go this very day at 4 
o'clock, or shall I not? Well, I won't tell you, I will put 
up my letter before 4, and keep this piece of intelligence 
for the next packet. 

The funeral takes place to-morrow, and as I don't seem 
to do much work here, I shall be soon probably on the 
wing, but perhaps I will take a week's touring somewhere 
about France, Tours and Nantes perhaps or elsewhere, 
or anywhere, I don't know; but I hope before I go to 
hear once more from you. I am happy indeed to hear 
how well you are. What a shame it was to assault my 
dear lady with my blue devils. Who could help looking 
to the^day of failing powers, but if I last a few years, no 
doubt I can get a shelter somewhere against that certain 
adversity, and so I ought not to show you my glum face 
or my dismal feelings. That's the worst of habit and 
confidence. You are so kind to me that I like to tell 
you all, and to think that in good or ill fortune I have 
your sympathy. Here's an opportunity for sentiment, 
here's just a little bit of the page left to say something 
neat and pretty. Je les meprise les jolis mots, vous en 
ai-je jamais fait de ma vie? Je les laisse a Monsieur 
Bullar et ses pareils — j'en ferai pour Mademoiselle Page, 
pour la ravissante la semillante la fretillante Adele (c'est 
ainsi qu'elle se nomme) mais pour vous ? Allons — partons 
— il est quatre heures — fermons la lettre — disons adieu, 
I'amie et moi — vous m'ecrirez avant mon depart n'est ce 
pas? Allez bien, dormez bien, marchez bien, s'il vous 
plait, et gardy mwaw ung petty moreso de voter cure. 

W. M. T. 



^t. 38] WILLIAM M. THACKEKAY 353 

[.Et 38] 

To THE Same 

["l AM AFRAID I DISGUSTED MACAULAy"] 

[Paris, September 14, 1849.] 
My dear Lady: 

This letter doesn't count, though it's most probbly 
the last of the series. Yesterday I couldn't write for I 
went to Chambourey early in the morning to see those 
two poor Miss Powers, and the poor old faded and un- 
happy D'Orsay, a^id I did not return home till exactly 1 
minute before post time, perhaps 2 late for the letter 
which I flung into the post last night. And so this is 
the last of the letters and I am coming back immediately. 
The last anything is unpleasant. . . . 

I was to have gone to-morrow for certain to Boulogne, 
at least, but a party to Pontainebleau was proposed — by 
whom do you think? — by the President himself; I am 
going to dine with him to-day, think of that! I believe 
I write this for the purpose solely of telling you this, — 
the truth is I have made acq^^aintance here with Lord 
Douglas, who is very good natured, and I suppose has 
been instigating the President to these hospitalities. I 
am afraid I disgusted Macaulay yesterday at dinner, at 
Sir George Napier's. We were told that an American 
lady was coming in the evening, whose great desire in 
life, was to meet the author of Vanity Fair, and the au- 
thor of the Lays of A. Kome, so I proposed to Macaulay 
to enact me, and to let me take his character. But he 
said solemnly, that he did not approve of practical jokes, 
and so this sport did not come to pass. Well, I shall see 
you at any rate, some day before the 23d., and I hope 
you will be happy at Southampton enjoying the end of 
the autumn, and I shall be glad to smoke a pipe with old 
Mr. Williams too, for I don't care for new acquaintances, 
whatever some people say, and have only your house now 
where I am completely at home. I have been idle here, 
but I have done plenty of dutif ulness, haven't I ? I must 
go dress myself, and tell old Dr. Halliday that I am go- 
ing to dine with the President ; that will please him more 
than even my conversation this evening, and the event 
will be written over to all the family before long, be sure 



354 WILLIAM M. THACKERAY . [iEt. 39 

of that. Don't you think Mr. Parr will like to know it, 
and that it will put me well with him? Perhaps I shall 
find the grand cross of the Legion of Honour under my 
plate; I will put it on and come to you in it in that case. 

I was going to have the impudence to give you a 
daguerreotype of myself which has been done here, very 
like and droll it looks, but it seemed to me too imperti- 
nent, and I gave it to somebody else. I've bought William 
four glasses to drink beer out of, since I never can get 
one of the silver ones when I come; don't let him be 
alarmed: these only cost a shilling apiece, and two such 
loves of eau de Cologne bottles for Mrs. Procter, and for 
my dear Mrs. Brookfield I have bought a diamond neck- 
lace and earrings, — I have bought you nothing but the 
handkerchiefs but I hope you will let me give you those, 
won't you? 

I was very sorry for Turpin; I do feel an interest in 
her, and I think she is very pretty; all this I solemnly 
vow and protest. My paper is out, here's the last corner 
of the last letter. I wonder ivho will ask me to dine on 
Monday next. 

[^t. 39] 

To THE Same 
[lamartine; a child actress] 

[Paris, 1850.] 
My dear Lady: 

Do you see how mad everybody is in the world? or is 
it not my own insanity? Yesterday, when it became 
time to shut up my letter, I was going to tell you about 
my elders, who have got hold of a mad old Indian woman, 
who calls herself Aline Gultave d'origine Mogole, who is 
stark staring mad, and sees visions, works miracles, que 
sais-je? The old fool is mad of sheer vanity, and yet 
fool as she is, my people actually believe in her, and I 
believe the old gentleman goes to her every day. To-day 
I went to see D'Orsay, who has made a bust of Lamar- 
tine, who, too, is mad with vanity. He has written some 
verses on his bust, and asks. Who is this? Is it a war- 
rior ? Is it a hero ? Is it a priest ? Is it a sage ? Is it a 



.^t. 39] WILLIAM M. THACKEKAY 355 

tribune of the people? Is it an Adonis? meaning that he 
is all these things, — verses so fatuous and crazy I never 
saw. Well, D'Orsay says they are the finest verses that 
ever were written, and imparts to me a translation which 
Miss Power has made of them; and D'Orsay believes in 
his mad rubbish of a statue, which he didn't make; be- 
lieves in it in the mad way that madmen do, — that it is 
divine, and that he made it; only as you loojs: in his eyes, 
you see that he doesn't quite believe, and when pressed 
hesitates, and turns away with a howl of rage. D'Orsay 
has fitted himself up a charming atelier with arms and 
trophies, pictures and looking-glasses, the tomb of Bless- 
ington, the sword and star of Napoleon, and a crucifix 
over his bed; and here he dwells without any doubts or 
remorses, admiring himself in the most horrible pictures 
which he has painted, and the statues which he gets done 
for him. I had been at work till two, all day before go- 
ing to see him; and thence went to Lady Normanby, who 
was very pleasant and talkative; and then tramping upon 
a half dozen of visits of duty. I had refused proffered 
banquets in order to dine at home, but when I got home 
at the dinner hour, everybody was away, the honne was 
ill and obliged to go to the country, and parents and 

children were away to dine with a Mrs. , a good 

woman who writes books, keeps a select boarding-house 
for young ladies who wish to see Parisian society, and 
whom I like, but cannot bear, because she has the organ 
of admiration too strongly. Papa was king, mamma was 
queen, in this company, I a sort of foreign emperor with 
the princesses my daughters. By Jove, it was intolerably 
painful; and I must go to her soiree to-morrow night too, 
and drag about in this confounded little Pedlington. 
Yesterday night, — I am afraid it was the first day of the 
week, — I dined with Morton, and met no less than four 
tables of English I knew, and went to the play. There 
was a little girl acting, who made one's heart ache; — 
the joke of the piece is, the child, who looks about three, 
is taken by the servants to a casino, is carried off for an 
hour by some dragoons, and comes back, having learned 
to smoke, to dance slang dances, and sing slang songs. 
Poor little rogue, she sung one of her songs, from an 
actor's arms; a wicked song, in a sweet little innocent 



356 WILLIAM M. THACKERAY [^t. 39 

voice. She will be bought and sold within three years 
from this time, and won't be playing at wickedness any 
more. I shall shut up my desk and say God bless all the 
little girls that you and I love, and their parents. God 
bless you, dear Lady. 

I have got a very amusing book, the Tatler newspaper 
of 1709; and that shall be my soporific I hope. I have 
been advanciijg in Blue Beard, but must give it up; it 
is too dreadfully cynical and wicked. It is in blank 
verse and all a diabolical sneer. Depend upon it. Helps 
is right. 

Wednesday. If I didn't write yesterday it was because 
I was wickedly employed. I was gambling until two 
o'clock this morning, playing a game called lansquenet 
which is very good gambling; and I left off, as I had 
begun, very thankful not to carry away any body's money 
or leave behind any of my own; but it was curious to 
watch the tempers of the various players, the meanness 
of one, the flurry and excitement of another, the differ- 
ence of the same man winning and losing; all which I 
got, besides a good dinner and a headache this morning. 
Annie and Minnie and my mother, came to see me yes- 
terday. I don't think they will be so very eager for Paris 
after three weeks here; the simple habits of our old peo- 
ple will hardly suit the little women. Even in my ab- 
sence in America, I don't quite like leaving them alto- 
gether here; I wonder if an amiable family, as is very 
kind to me, will give them hospitality for a month? I 
was writing Blue Beard all day; very sardonic and amus- 
ing to do, but I doubt whether it will be pleasant to read 
or hear, or even whether it is right to go on with this 
wicked vein; and also, I must tell you that a story is 
biling up in my interior, in which there shall appear 
some very good, lofty, and generous people; perhaps a 
story without any villains in it would be good, wouldn't 
it? 

Thursday. — Thanks for your letter, madame. If I tell 
you my plans and my sm.all gossip, I don't bore you, do 
I? You listen to them so kindly at home, that I've got 
the habit, you see. Why don't you write a little hand- 
writing, and send me yours ? This place begins to' be 
as bad as London in the season; there are dinners and 



^t. 39] WILLIAM M. THACKEKAY 357 

routs for every day and night. Last night I went to dine 
at home, with bouilli hoeuf and ordinaire, and bad ordi- 
naire too; but the dinner was just as good as a better 
one, and afterwards I went with my mother to a soiree, 
where I had to face fifty people of whom I didn't know 
one; and being there, was introduced to other soiree 
givers, be hanged to them. And there I left my ma, and 
went oif to Madame Gudin's the painter's wife, where 
really there was a beautiful ball; and all the world, all 
the English world that is; and to-night it is the Presi- 
dent's ball, if you please, and to-morrow, and the next 
day, and the next, more gaieties. It was queer to see 
poor old Castlereagh in a dark room, keeping aloof from 
the dancing and the gaiety, and having his thoughts 
fixed on kingdom come, and Bennett confessor and mar- 
tyr; while Lady Castlereagh, who led him into his devo- 
tional state, was enjoying the music and the gay com- 
pany, as cheerfully as the most mundane person present. 
The French people all talk to me about Ponche, when I 
am introduced to them, which wounds my vanity, which 
is wholesome very likely. Among the notabilities was 
Vicomte D'Arlincourt, a mad old romance writer, on 
whom I amused myself by pouring the most tremendous 
compliments I could invent. He said, j'ai vu VEcosse; 
mais V alter Scott ny etait plus, helas! I said, vous 
y etiez, Vicomte, c' etait hieii assez d'un — on which the 
old boy said I possessed French admirably, and knew to 
speak the prettiest things in the prettiest manner. I wish 
you could see him, I wish you could see the world here. 
I wish you and Mr. were coming to the play with me 
to-night, to a regular melodrama, far away on the Boule- 
vard, and a quiet little snug dinner au Banquet d'Ana- 
creon. The Banquet d'Anacreon is a dingy little restau- 
rant on the boulevard where all the plays are acted, 
and they tell great things of a piece called Paillasse in 
which Le Maitre performs; nous verrons, Madame, nous 
rerrons. But with all this racket and gaiety, do you 
understand that a gentleman feels very lonely? I swear 
I had sooner have a pipe and a gin and water soiree with 
somebody, than the best President's orgeat. I go to my 
cousins for half an hour almost every day; you'd like 
them better than poor Mary whom you won't be able to 



358 WILLIAM M. THACKERAY [^t. 40 

stand, at least if she talks to you about her bodily state 
as she talks to me. What else shall I say in this stupid 
letter? I've not seen any children as pretty as Magda- 
lene, that's all. I have told Annie to write to you and 
I am glad Mrs. Fan is going to stay; and I hear that 
several papers have reproduced the thunder and small 
beer articles; and I thank you for your letter; and pray 
the best prayers I am worth for you, and your husband, 
and child, my dear lady. 

W. M. T. 

[.Et. 40] 

To THE Same 
[to the zoological gardens; boz] 

1S51. 

I have no news to give for these two days, but I have 
been busy and done nothing. Virtue doesn't agree with 
me well, and a very little domestic roseleaf rumpled puts 
me off my work for the day. Yesterday it was, I forget 
what; to-day it has been the same reason; and lo! Satur- 
day Cometh and nothing is done. . . . We have been to 
the Zoological Gardens this fine day and amused ourselves 
in finding likenesses to our friends in many of the ani- 
mals. Thank Evns! both of the girls have plenty of fun 
and humour; your's ought to have, from both sides of the 
house, — and a deal of good besides, if she do but possess 
a mixture of William's disposition and yours. He will 
be immensely tender over the child when nobody's by, I 
am sure of that. ISTo father knows for a few months what 
it is, but they learn afterwards. It strikes- me I have 
made these statements before. 

We had a dull dinner at Lady 's, a party of • 

chiefly ; and- O ! such a pretty one, blue eyes, gold hair, 
alabaster shoulders, and such a splendid display of them. 
Venables was there, very shy and grand looking — how 
kind that man has always been to me ! — and a Mr. Simeon 
of the Isle of Wight, an Oxford man, who won my heart 
by praising certain parts of Vanity Fair which people 
won't like. Carlyle glowered in in the evening; and a 
man who said a good thing. Speaking of a stupid place 
at the sea-side. Sandwich I think, somebody said, "Can't 



^t. 41] WILLIAM M. THACKEEAY 359 

you have any fun there?" "0! yes," Corry said, ''but 
you must take it with you." A nice speech I think, not 
only witty but indicating a gay cheerful heart. I intend 
to try after that; we intend to try after that; and by 
action and so forth get out of that morbid dissatisfied 
condition. Now I am going to dress to dine with Lord 
Holland; my servant comes in to tell me it is time. He 
is a capital man, an attentive, alert, silent, plate-cleaning, 
intelligent fellow; I hope we shall go on well together, 
and that I shall be able to afford him. . . . 

Boz is capital this month; some very neat pretty natu- 
ral writing indeed, better than somebody else's again. 
By Jove, he is a clever fellow, and somebody else must 
and shall do better. Quiet, pleasant dinner at Lord 
Holland's; leg of mutton and that sort of thing; home 
to bed at 10.30, and to-morrow to work really and truly. 
Let me hear, please, that you are going on well and I 
shall go on all the better. 



[^t. 41] 

To Edward FitzGerald 
["best and oldest friend"] 

October 27, 1852. 
My dearest old Friend, — 

I mustn't go away without shaking your hand, and say- 
ing Farewell and God Bless you. If anything happens 
to me, you by these presents must get ready the Book 
of Ballads which you like, and which I had not time 
to prepare before embarking on this voyage. And I 
should like my daughters to remember that you are the 
best and oldest friend their Father ever had, and that 
you would act as such: as my literary executor and so 
forth. My Books would yield a something as copyrights : 
and, should anything occur, I have commissioned friends 
in good place to get a Pension for my poor little wife. 
. . . Does not this sound gloomily? Well: who knows 
what Fate is in store : and I feel not at all downcast, but 
very grave and solemn just at the brink of a great voyage. 

I shall send you a copy of Esmond to-morrow or so 
which you shall yawn over when you are inclined. But 



360 WILLIAM M. THACKEKAY [^t. 41 

the great comfort I have in thinking about my dear old 
boy is that recollection of our youth when we loved each 
other as I do now while I write Farewell. 

Laurence has done a capital head of me ordered by 
Smith the Publisher: and I have ordered a copy and 
Lord Ashburton another. If Smith gives me this one, I 
shall send the copy to you. I care for you as you know, 
and always like to think that I am fondly and affection- 
ately yours 

W. M. T. 

I sail from Liverpool on Saturday Morning by the 
Canada for Boston. 



[^t. 41] 

To Mrs. Brookfield 
[lectures ; table-tipping] 

Clarendon Hotel, New York, 
Tuesday, 23 Dec, [1852.] 
My dear Lady, — 

I send you a little line and shake your hand across the 
water. God bless you and yours. . . . 

The passage is nothing, now it is over; I am rather 
ashamed of gloom and disquietude about such a trifling 
journey. I have made scores of new acquaintances and 
lighted on my legs as usual. I didn't expect to like 
people as I do, but am agreeably disappointed and find 
many most pleasant companions, natural and good; natu- 
ral and well read and well bred too; and I suppose am 
none the worse pleased because everybody has read all 
my books and praises my lectures; (I preach in a Uni- 
tarian Church, and the parson comes to hear me. His 
name is Mr. Bellows; it isn't a pretty name), and there 
are 2000 people nearly who come, and the lectures are 
so well liked that it is probable I shall do them over 
again. So really there is a chance of making a pretty 
little sum of money for old age, imbecility, and those 
young ladies afterwards. 

Had Lady Ashburton told you of the moving tables? 
Try, six or seven of you, a wooden table without brass 



i 



.Et. 41] WILLIAM M. THACKEEAY 361 

castors ; sit round it, lay your hands flat on it, not touch- 
ing each other, and in half an hour or so perhaps it will 
begin to turn round and round. It is the most wonderful 
thing, but I have tried twice in vain since I saw it and 
did it at Mr. Bancroft's. I have not been into fashion- 
able society yet, what they call the upper ten thousand 
here, but have met very likeable of the lower sort. On 
Sunday I went into the country, and there was a great 
rosy jolly family of sixteen or eighteen people, round a 
great tea-table; and the lady of the house told me to 
make myself at home — remarking my bashfulness, you 
know — and said, with a jolly face, and twinkling of her 
little eyes, "Lord bless you, we know you all to pieces!" 
and there was sitting by me O ! such a pretty girl, the 
very picture of Rubens's second wife, and face and figure. 
Most of the ladies, all except this family, are as lean as 
greyhounds; they dress prodigiously fine, taking for their 
models the French actresses, I think, of the Boulevard 
theatres. 

Broadway is miles upon miles long, a rush of life such 
as I never have seen; not so full as the Strand, but so 
rapid. The houses are always being torn down and built 
up again, the railroad cars drive slap into [the] midst of 
the city. There are barricades and scaifoldings banging 
everywhere. I have not been into a house except the fat 
country one, but something new is being done to it, and 
the hammerings are clattering in the passage, or a wall, 
or steps are down, or the family is going to move. No- 
body is quiet here, no' more am I. The rush and rest- 
lessness pleases me, and I like, for a little, the dash of 
the stream. I- am not received as a god, which I like too. 
There is one paper which goes on every morning saying 
I am a snob, and I don't say no. Six people were reading 
it at breakfast this morning, and the man opposite me 
popped it under the table cloth. But the other papers 
roar with approbation. "Criez, heuglez 0! Journaux." 
They don't understand French though; that bit of Be- 
ranger will hang fire. Do you remember Jete sur cette 
houle &c. ? Yes, my dear sister remembers. God Almighty 
bless her, and all she loves. 

I may write next Saturday to Chesham Place; you will 
go and carry my love to those ladies, won't you? Here 



362 WILLIAM M. THACKEEAY [JEt. 41 

comes in a man with, a paper I hadn't seen; I must cut 
out a bit just as the actors do, but then I think you will 
like it, and that is why I do it. There was a very rich 
biography about me in one of the papers the other day, 
with an account of a servant, maintained in the splendour 
of his menial decorations. — Poor old John whose picture 
is in Pendennis. And I have filled my paper, and I 
shake my dear lady's hand across the roaring sea, and 
I know that you will be glad to know that I prosper 
and that I am well, and that I am yours 

W. M. T. 

[^t. 41] 

- To THE Same 
["acting the lion business"; Beatrix] 

Direct Clarendon Hotel New York. 

Philadelphia, 
21 to 23 January, [1853.] 

My dear lady's kind sad letter gave me pleasure, mel- 
ancholy as it was. . . . 

At present, I incline to come to England in June or 
July and get ready a new set of lectures, and bring them 
back with me. That second course will enable me to pro- 
vide for the children and their mother finally and satis- 
factorily, and my mind will be easier after that, and I 
can sing Nunc Dimittis without faltering. There is 
money-making to try at, to be sure, and ambition, — I 
mean in public life; perhaps that might interest a man, 
but not novels, nor lectures, nor fun, any more. I don't 
seem to care about these any more, or for praise, or for 
abuse, or for reputation of that kind. That literary play 
is played out, and the puppets going to be locked up for 
good and all. 

Does this melancholy come from the circumstance that 
I have been out to dinner and supper every night this 
week ? O ! I am tired of shaking hands with people, and 
acting the lion business night after night. Everybody 
is introduced and shakes hands. I know thousands of 
Colonels, professors, editors, and what not, and walk the 
streets guiltily, knowing that I don't know 'em, and 
trembling lest the man opposite to me is one of my 



^t. 41] WILLIAM M. THACKERAY 363 

friends of the day before. I believe I am popular, except 
at Boston among the newspaper men who fired into me, 
but a great favorite with the monde there and elsewhere. 
Here in Philadelphia it is all praise and kindness. Do 
you know there are 500,000 people in Philadelphia? I 
daresay you had no idea thereof, and smile at the idea 
of there being a monde here and at Boston and New 
York. Early next month I begin at Washington and 
Baltimore, then D. V. to New Orleans, back to New York 
by Mississippi and Ohio, if the steamers don't blow up, 
and if they do, you know I am easy. What a, weary, 
weary letter I am writing to you. . . . Have you heard 
that I have found Beatrix at New York? I have basked 
in her bright eyes, but Ah, me! I don't care for her, and 
shall hear of her marrying a' New York buck with a 
feeling of perfect pleasure. She is really as like Beatrix, 
as that fellow William and I met was like Costigan. She 
has a dear woman of a mother upwards of fifty-five, whom 
I like the best, I think, and think the handsomest, — a 
sweet lady. What a comfort those dear Elliots are to 
me; I have had but one little letter from J. E., full of 
troubles too. She says you have been a comfort to them 
too. I can't live without the tenderness of some woman; 
and expect when I am sixty I shall be marrying a girl 
of eleven or twelve, innocent, barley-sugar-loving, in a 
pinafore. 

They came and interrupted me as I was writing this, 
two days since; and I have been in public almost ever 
since. The lectures are enormously suivies and I read 
at the rate of a pound a minute nearly. The curious 
thing is, that I think I improve in the reading; at certain 
passages a sort of emotion springs up; I begin to under- 
stand how actors feel affected over and over again at 
the same passages of the play; — they are affected off the 
stage too; I hope I shan't be. 

Crowe is my immensest comfort; I could not live with- 
out someone to take care of me, and he is the kindest 
and most affectionate henchman ever man had. I went 
to see Pierce Butler yesterday, Eanny's husband. I 
thought she would like me to see the children if I 
could, and I asked about them particularly, but they 
were not shown. I thought of good Adelaide coming to 



364 WILLIAM M. THACKEKAY [^t. 44 

sing to you when you were ill. I may like everyone 
who is kind to you, mayn't I? . . . What for has Lady 
Ashburton never written to me? I am writing this with 
a new gold pen in such a fine gold case. An old gentle- 
man gave it to me yesterday, a white-headed old philoso- 
pher and political economist. There's something simple 
in the way these kind folks regard a man; they read our 
books as if we were Fielding, and so forth. The other 
night some men were talking of Dickens and Bulwer as 
if they were equal to Shakespeare, and I was pleased to 
find myself pleased at hearing them praised. The prettiest 
girl in Philadelphia, poor soul, has read Vanity Fair 
twelve times. I paid her a great big compliment yester- 
day, about her good looks of course, and she turned 
round delighted to her friend and said, ''Ai most tallut," 
— that is something like the pronunciation. Beatrix has 
an adorable pronunciation, and uses little words, which 
are much better than wit. And what do you think? 
One of the prettiest girls in Boston is to be put under 
my charge to go to a marriage at Washington next week. 
We are to travel together all the way alone — only, only, 
I'm not going. Young people when they are engaged 
here, make tours alone; fancy what the British Mrs. 
Grundy would say at such an idea ! 

There was a young quakeress at the lecture last night, 
listening about Fielding. Lord! Lord! how pretty she 
was! There are hundreds of such everywhere, airy look- 
ing little beings, with magnolia — no, not magnolia, what 
is that white flower you make bouquets of, Camilla or 
camelia — complexions, and lasting not much' longer. . . . 
God bless you and your children; write to me sometimes, 
and farewell. 



[^t. 44] 

To William B. Eeed 
["what cax the man mean?"] 

Baltimore, Jan. 16, 1856. 
My dear Reed, — 

Your letter of the 9th, with one from Boston of the 
8th, was given to me last night when I came home. In 



1 



iEt. 44] WILLIAM M. THACKEKAY 365 

what possible snow-drift have they been lying torpid? 
One hundred thanks for your goodness in the lecture, 
and all other matters ; and if I can find the face to read 
those printed lectures over again, I'll remember your 
good advice. That splendid crowd on the last lecture 
night I knew would make our critical friend angry. I 
have not seen the last article, of course, and don't intend 
to look for it. And as I was reading the George III 
lecture here on Monday night, could not help asking 
myself, ''What can the man mean by saying that I am 
uncharitable, unkindly — that I sneer at virtue?" and so 
forth. My own conscience being pretty clear, I can re- 
ceive the "Bulletin's" displeasure with calmness — remem- 
bering how I used to lay about me in my own youthful 
days, and how I generally took a good tall mark to 
hit at. 

Wicked weather, and an opera company which per- 
formed on the two first lecture nights here, made the 
audiences rather thin; but they fetched up at .the third 
lecture, and to-night is the last; after which I go to 
Richmond, then to go further south, from Charlestown 
to Havannah* and New Orleans; perhaps to turn back 
and try westward, w^iere I know there is a great crop 
of dollars to be reaped. But to be snow-bound in my 
infirm condition! I might never get out of the snow 
alive. 

I go to Washington to-morrow for a night. I was 
there and dined with Crampton on Saturday. He was 
in good force and spirits, and I saw no signs of packing- 
up or portmanteaus in the hall. 

I send my best regards to Mrs. Reed and your sister- 
in-law, and Lewis and his kind folks, and to Mac's 
whisky-punch, which gave me no headache : I'm very 
sorry it treated you so unkindlv. — Always yours, dear 
Reed. 

W. M. Thackeray. 

* Savannah. 



366 CHAKLES DICKENS [^t. 29 

[^t. 44] 

To William B. Eeed 
[sudden return to England] 

April 24, [1856]. 
My dear Reed, — 

When you get this, . . . remummum-ember me to 
kick-kick-kind ffu-fffu-ffriends ... a sudden resolution 
— to — mummum-mor-row ... in the Bu-bu-baltic. 

Good-bye, my dear kind friend, and all kind friends in 
Philadelphia. I didn't think of going away when I left 
home this morning; but it's the best way. 

I think it is best to send back 25 per cent to poor* 
. Will you kindly give him the enclosed; and de- 
pend on it I shall go and see Mrs. Best when I go to 
London, and tell her all about you. My heart is un- 
commonly heavy: and I am yours gratefully and affec- 
tionately. 

W. M. T. 

[^t.29] CHAKLES DICKENS 

1812-1870 
To Washington Irving 
[enthusiastic praise] 

[1841.] 
My dear Sir, — 

There is no man in the world who could have given 
me the heartfelt pleasure you have, by your kind note 
of the thirteenth of last month. There is no living 
writer, and there are very few among the dead, whose 
approbation I should feel so proud to earn. And with 
everything you have written upon my shelves, and in 
my thoughts, and in my heart of hearts, I may honestly 
and truly say so. If you could know how earnestly I 
write this, you would be glad to read it — as I hope you 
will be, faintly guessing at the warmth of the hand I 
autobiographically hold out to you over the broad 
Atlantic. 

* Who had managed the lectures; the last of them were not financially 
successful. 



^t. 29] CHARLES DICKENS 367 

I wish I could find in your welcome letter some hint 
of an intention to visit England. I can't. I have held 
it at arm's length, and taken a bird's-eye view of it, 
after reading it a great many times, but there is no 
greater encouragement in it this way than on a micro- 
scopic inspection. I should love to go with you — as I 
have gone, God knows how often — into Little Britain, and 
Eastcheap, and Green Arbour Court, and Westminster 
Abbey, I should like to travel with you, outside the last 
of the coaches down to Bracebridge Hall. It would make 
my heart glad to compare notes with you about that 
shabby gentleman in the oilcloth hat and red nose, who 
sat in the nine - cornered back - parlor of the Mason's 
Arms; and about Robert Preston and the tallow-chan- 
dler's ^idow, whose sitting-room is second nature to me; 
and about all those delightful places and people that I 
used to walk about and dream of in the daytime, when 
a very small and not over-particularly-tLken-care-of boy. 
I have a good deal to say, too, about that dashing Alonzo 
de Ojeda, that you can't help being fonder of than you 
ought to be; and much to hear concerning Moorish 
legend, and poor unhappy Bobadil. Diedrich Knicker- 
bocker I have worn to death in my pocket, and yet I 
should show you his inutilated carcass with a joy past 
all expression. 

I have been so accustomed to associate you with my 
pleasantest and happiest thoughts, and with my leisure 
hours, that I rush at once into full confidence with you, 
and fall, as it were naturally and by the very laws of 
gravity, into your open arms. Questions come thronging 
to my pen as to the lips of people who meet after long 
hoping to do so. I don't know what to say first or what 
to leave unsaid, and am constantly disposed to break off 
and tell you again how glad I am this moment has 
arrived. 

My dear Washington Irving, I cannot thank you 
enough for your cordial and generous praise, or tell you 
what deep and lasting gratification it has given to me. 
I hope to have many letters from you, and to exchange 
a frequent correspondence. I send this to say so. After 
the first two or three I shall settle down into a con- 
nected style, and become gradually rational. 



368 CHAKLES DICKENS [^t. 30 

You know what the feeling is, after having: written a 
letter, sealed it, and sent it off. I shall picture your 
reading this, and answering it before it has lain one 
night in the post-office. Ten to one that before the 
fastest packet could reach New York I shall be writing 
again. 

Do you suppose the post-office clerks care to receive 
letters ? I have my doubts. - They get into a dreadful 
habit of indiiference. A postman, I imagine, is quite 
callous. Conceive his delivering one to himself, without 
being startled by a preliminary double knock! 

Always your faithful Eriend, 

Charles Dickens. 
[^t. 30] 

To W. C. Macready 

["this is not the republic I CAME TO SEe"J 

BALTniORE, Twenty-second March, 1842. 
My dear Friend, — 

I beg your pardon, but you were speaking of rash leaps 
at hasty conclusions. Are you quite sure you designed 
that remark for me? Have you not, in the hurry of 
correspondence, slipped a paragraph into my letter which 
belongs of right to somebody else? When did you ever 
find me leap at wrong conclusions? I pause for a reply. 

Pray, sir, did you ever find me admiring Mr. • ? 

On the contrary, did you never hear of my protesting 
through good, better, and best report that he was not 
an open or a candid man, and would one day, beyond all 
doubt, displease you by not being so? I pause again 
for a reply. 

Are you quite sure, Mr. Macready — and I address my- 
self to you with the sternness of a man in the pit — are 
you quite sure, sir, that you do not view America through 
the pleasant mirage which often surrounds a thing that 
has been, but not a thing that is? Are you quite sure 
that when you were here you relished it as well as you 
do now when you look back upon it? The early spring 
birds, Mr. Macready, do sing in the groves that you were, 
very often, not over well pleased with many of the new 
country's social aspects. Are the birds to be trusted? 
Again I pause for a reply. 



^.t. 30] CHARLES DICKENS 369 

My dear Macready, I desire to be so honest and just 
to those who have so enthusiastically and earnestly wel- 
comed me, that I burned the last letter I wrote to you — 
even to you to whom I would speak as to myself — rather 
than let it come with anything that might seem like an 
ill-considered word of disappointment. I preferred that 
you should think me neglectful (if you could imagine 
anything so wild) rather than I should do wrong in this 
respect. Still it is of no use. I am disappointed. This 
is not the republic I came to see; this is not the republic 
of my imagination. I infinitely prefer a liberal mon- 
archy — even with its sickening accompaniments of court 
circulars — to such a government as this. The more I 
think of its use and strength, the ' poorer and more 
trifling in a thousand aspects it appears to my eyes. In 
everything of which it has made a boast — excepting its 
education of the people and its care for poor children — 
it sinks immeasurably below the level I had placed it 
upon; and England, even England, bad and faulty as the 
old land is, and miserable as millions of her people are, 
rises in the comparison. 

You live here, Macready, as I have sometimes heard 
you imagining! You! Loving you with all my heart 
and soul, and knowing what your disposition really is, I 
would not condemn you to a year's residence on this side 
of the Atlantic for any money. Freedom of opinion! 
Where is it? I see a press more mean, and paltry, and 
silly, and disgraceful than any country I ever knew. If 
that is its standard, here it is. But I speak of Bancroft, 
and am advised to be silent on that subject, for he is 
''a black sheep — a Democrat." I speak of Bryant, and 
am entreated to be more careful, for the same reason. 
I speak of international copyright, and am implored not 
to ruin myself outright. I speak of Miss Martineau, 
and all parties — Slave Upholders and Abolitionists, Whigs, 
Tyler Whigs, and Democrats, shower down upon me a 
perfect cataract- of abuse. "But what has she done? 
Surely she praised America enough!" "Yes, but she told 
us of some of our faults, and Americans can't bear to 
be told of their faults. Don't split on that rock, Mr. 
Dickens, don't write about America; we are so very 



370 CHAKLES DICKENS [.^t. 30 

Freedom of opinion! Macready, if I had been born 
here and had written my books in this country, pro- 
ducing them with no stamp of approval from any other 
land, it is my solemn belief that I should have lived and 
died poor, unnoticed, and a "black sheep" to boot. I 
never was more convinced of anything than I am of that. 

The people are affectionate, generous, open-hearted, 
hospitable, enthusiastic, good-humoured, polite to women, 
frank and candid to all strangers, anxious to oblige, far 
less prejudiced than they have been described to be, 
frequently polished and refined, very seldom rude or dis- 
agreeable. I have made a great many friends here, even 
in public conveyances, whom I have been truly sorry to 
part from. In the towns I have formed perfect attach- 
ments. I have seen none of that greediness and in- 
decorousness on which travellers have laid so much em- 
phasis. I have returned frankness with frankness; met 
questions not intended to be rude, with answers meant 
to be satisfactory; and have not spoken to one man, 
woman or child of any degree who has not grown posi- 
tively affectionate before we parted. In the respects of 
not being left alone, and of being horribly disgusted by 
tobacco chewing and tobacco spittle, I have suffered con- 
siderably. The sight of slavery in Virginia, the hatred 
of British feeling upon the subject, and the miserable 
hints of the impotent indignation of the South, have 
pained me very much ! on the last head, of course, I have 
felt nothing but a mingled pity and amusement; on the 
other, sheer distress. But however much I like the in- 
gredients of this great dish, I cannot but come back to 
the point upon which I started, and say that the dish 
itself goes against the grain with me, and that I don't 
like it. 

You know that I am truly a Liberal. I believe I have 
as little pride as most men, and I am conscious of not the 
smallest annoyance from being "hail fellow well met" 
with everybody. I have not had greater pleasure in the 
company of any set of men among the thousands I have 
received than in that of the carmen of Hertford,* who 
presented themselves in a body in their blue frocks, 

* Hartford, Connecticut. 



^Et. 30] CHARLES DICKENS 371 

among a crowd of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, and 
bade me w^elcome through their spokesman. They had 
all read my books, and all perfectly understood them. 
It is not these things I have in my mind when I say 
that the man who comes to this country a Radical, and 
goes home again with his opinions unchanged, must be 
a Radical on reason, sympathy, and reflection, and one 
who has so well considered the subject that he has no 
chance of wavering. 

We have been to Boston, Worcester, Hertford, New 
Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, 
Eredericksburgh, Richmond, and back to Washington 
again. The premature heat of the weather (it was eighty 
yesterday in the shade) and Clay's advice — how you 
would like Clay! — have made us determine not to go to 
Charleston; but having got to Richmond, I think I 
should have turned back under any circumstances. We 
remain at Baltimore for two days, of which this is one; 
then we go to Harrisburgh. Then by the canal boat and 
the railroad over the Alleghany Mountains to Pittsburgh, 
then down the Ohio to Cincinnati, then to Louisville, and 
then to St. Louis. I have been invited to a public 
entertainment in every town I have entered, and have 
refused them; but I have excepted St. Louis as the 
farthest point of my travels. My friends there have 
passed some resolutions which Eorster has, and will show 
you. From St. Louis we cross to Chicago, traversing 
immense prairies. Thence by the lakes and Detroit to 
Buffalo, and so to Niagara. A run into Canada follows 
of course, and then — let me write the blessed word in 
capitals — we turn towards HOME. 

Kate has written to Mrs. Macready, and it is useless 
for me to thank you, my dearest friend, or her, for your 
care of our dear children, which is our constant theme of 
discourse. Eorster has gladdened our hearts with his 
account of the triumph of "Acis and Galatea," and I 
am anxiously looking for news of the tragedy. Eorrest 
breakfasted with us at Richmond last Saturday — he was 
acting there, and I invited him — and he spoke very 
gratefully, and very like a man, of your kindness to him 
when he was in London. 

David Colden is as good a fellow as ever lived; and 



372 OHABLES DICKENS [^t. 3G 

I am deeply in love with his wife. Indeed we have 
received the greatest and most earnest and zealous kind- 
ness from the whole family, and quite love them all. 
Do you remember one Greenhow, whom you invited to 
pass some days with you at the hotel on the Kaatskill 
Mountains ? He is translator to the State Office at Wash- 
ington, has a very pretty wife, and a little girl of five 
years old. We dined with them, and had a very pleas- 
ant day. The President invited me to dinner, but I 
couldn't stay for it. I had a private audience, however, 
and we attended the public drawing-room besides. 

Now, don't you rush at the quick conclusion that I 
have rushed at a quick conclusion. Pray, be upon your 
guard. If you can by any process estimate the extent 
of my affectionate regard for you, and the rush I shall 
make when I reach London to take you by your true 
right hand, I don't object. But let me entreat you to be 
very careful how you come down upon the sharpsighted 
individual who pens these words, which you seem to me 
to have done in what Willmott would call "one of Mr. 
Macready's rushes." 

I am ever, my dear Macready, 

Your faithful Friend, 
Charles Dickens. 
[^t. 36] 

To John Forster 
[in praise of the "life of goldsmith"] 

Devonshire Terrace, 
Saturday, Twenty-second April, 1848. 
My dear Forster, — 

I finished Goldsmith yesterday, after dinner, having 
read it from the first page to the last with the greatest'* 
care and attention. 

As a picture of the time, I really think it impossible 
to give it too much praise. It seems to me to be the 
very essence of all about the time that I have ever seen 
in biography or fiction, presented in most wise and hu- 
mane lights, and in a thousand new and just aspects 
I have never liked Johnson half so well. Nobody's con 
tempt for Boswell ought to be capable of increase, but 
I have never seen him in my mind's eye half so plainly. 



^t. 36] CHAKLES DICKENS 373 

The introduction of him is quite a masterpiece. I 
should point to that, if I didn't know the author, as 
being done by somebody with a remarkably vivid con- 
ception of what he narrated, and a most admirable and 
fanciful power of communicating it to another. All 
about Reynolds is charming: and the first account of 
the Literary Club and of Beauclerc as excellent a piece 
of description as ever I read in my life. But to read 
the book is to be in the time. It lives again in as fresh 
and lively a manner as if it were presented on an im- 
possibly good stage by the very best actors that ever 
lived, or by the real actors come out of their graves 
on purpose. 

And as to Goldsmith himself, and his life, and the 
tracing of it out in his own writings, and the manful 
and dignified assertion of him without any sobs, whines, 
or convulsions of any sort, it is throughout a noble 
achievement, of which, apart from any private and per- 
sonal affection for you, I think (and really believe) I 
should feel proud, as one who had no indifferent percep- 
tion of these books of his — to the best of my remem- 
brance — when little more than a child. I was a little 
afraid in the beginning, when he committed those very 
discouraging imprudences, that you were going to cham- 
pion him somewhat indiscriminately; but I very soon 
got over that fear, and found reason in every page to 
admire the sense, calmness, and moderation with which 
you made the love and admiration of the reader cluster 
about him from his youth, and strengthen with his 
strength — and weakness too, which is better still. 

I don't quite agree with you in two small respects. 
First, I question very much whether it would have been 
a good thing for every great man to have had his Bos- 
well, inasmuch that I think that two Boswells, or three 
at most, would tave made great men extraordinarily 
false, and would have set them on always playing a part, 
and would have iuade distinguished people about them 
for ever restless and distrustful. I can imagine a suc- 
cession of Boswells bringing about a tremendous state 
of falsehood in society, and playing the very devil with 
confidence and friendship. Secondly, I cannot help ob- 
jecting to that practice (begun, I think, or greatly en- 



374 CHAKLES DICKENS [^t. 36 

larged by Hunt) of italicising lines and words and whole 
passages in extracts, without some very special reason 
indeed. It does appear to be a kind of assertion of the 
editor over the reader — almost over the author himself — 
which grates upon me. The author might almost as well 
do it himself to my thinking, as a disagreeable thing; 
and it is such a strong contrast to the modest, quiet, 
tranquil beauty of "The Deserted Village," for instance, 
that I would almost as soon hear "the town crier" speak 
the lines. The practice always reminds me of a man 
seeing a beautiful view, and not thinking how beautiful 
it is half so much as what he shall say about it. 

In that picture at the close of the third book (a most 
beautiful one) of Goldsmith sitting looking out of win- 
dow at the Temple trees, you speak of the "gray-eyed" 
rooks. Are you sure they are "gray-eyed"? The raven's 
eye is a deep lustrous black, and so, I suspect, is the 
rook's, except when the light shines full into it. 

I have reserved for a closing word — though I don't 
mean to be eloquent about it, being far too much in 
earnest — the admirable manner in which the case of the 
literary man is stated throughout this book. It is splen- 
did. I don't believe that any book was ever written, or 
anything ever done or said, half so conducive to the 
dignity and honour of literature as "The Life and Ad- 
ventures of Oliver Goldsmith," by . J. F., of the Inner 
Temple. The gratitude of every man who is content to 
rest his station and claims quietly on literature, and to 
make no feint of living by anything else, is your due 
for evermore. I have often said, here and there, when 
you have been at work upon the book, that I was sure it 
would be; and I shall insist on that debt being due to 
you (though there will be no need for insisting about it) 
as long as I have any tediousness and obstinacy to be- 
stow on anybody. Lastly, I never will tear the biography 
compared with Boswell's except under vigorous protest. 
For I do say that it is mere folly to put into opposite 
scales a book, however amusing and curious, written by 
an unconscious coxcomb like that, and one which surveys 
and grandly understands the characters of all the illus- 
trious company that move in it. 

My dear Forster, I cannot sufficiently say how proud 



^t. 39] CHARLES DICKENS 375 

I am of what you have done, or how sensible I am of 
being so tenderly connected with it. When I look over 
this note, I feel as if I had said no part of what I 
think; and yet if I were to write another I should say 
no more, for I can't get it out. I desire no better for 
my fame, when my personal dustiness shall be past the 
control of my love of order, than such a biographer and 
such a critic. And again I say, most solemnly, that 
literature in England has never had, and probably never 
will have, such a champion as you are, in right of this 
book. 

Ever affectionately, 

Charles Dickens. 
[Mt. 39] 

To Henry Austin 
["tumbling over workmen"; a wreck] 

Broadstairs, 
Monday, Eighth September, 1851. 
My dear Henry, — 

Your letter, received this morning, has considerably al- 
layed the anguish of my soul. Our letters crossed, of 
course, as letters under such circumstances always do. 

I am perpetually wandering (in fancy) up and down 
the house and tumbling over the workmen; when I feel 
that they are gone to dinner I become low, when I look 
forward to their total abstinence on Sundays, I am 
wretched. The gravy at dinner has a taste of glue in it. 
I smell paint in the sea. Phantom lime attends me all 
the day long. I dream that I am a carpenter and can't 
partition off the hall. I frequently dance (with a dis- 
tinguished company) in the drawing-room, and fall in 
the kitchen for want of a pillar, 

A great to-do here. A steamer lost on the Goodwins 
yesterday, and our men bringing in no end of dead 
cattle and sheep. I stood a supper for them last night, 
to the unbounded gratification of Broadstairs. They 
came in from the wreck very wet and tired, and very 
much disconcerted by the nature of their prize — which, 
I suppose, after all, will have to be recommitted to the 
sea, when the hides and tallow are secured. One lean- 
faced boatman murmured, when they were all rumina- 



376 CHAELES DICKENS [JEt. 40 

tive over the bodies as they lay on the pier: "Couldn't 
sassages be made on it?" but retired in confusion shortly 
afterwards, overwhelmed by the execrations of the by- 
standers. 

Ever affectionately, 

Charles Dickens. 

P.S. — Sometimes I think 's bill will be too long 

to be added up until Babbage's calculating-machine shall 
be improved and finished. Sometimes that there is not 
paper enough ready made, to carry it over and bring it 
forward upon. 

I dream, also, of the workmen every night. They 
make faces at me, and won't do anything. 



[^t. 40] 

To W. H. Wills 
[barking dogs] 

Tavistock House, 
Thursday, Ninth December, 1852. 
My dear Wills, — 

I am driven mad by dogs, who have taken it into their 
accursed heads to assemble every morning in the piece of 
ground opposite, and who have barked this morning for 
five hours without intermission; positively rendering it 
impossible for me to work, and so making what is really 
ridiculous quite serious to me. I wish, between this and 
dinner, you would send John to see if he can hire a gun, 
with a few caps, some powder, and a few charges of 
small shot. If you duly commission him with a card, 
he can easily do it. And if I get those implements up 
here to-night, I'll be the death of some of them to- 
morrow morning. 

Ever faithfully, 

Charles Dickens. 



^t. 41] CHAKLES DICKENS 377 

[^t. 40] 

To Clarksox Stanfield 
[a nautical letter] 

H. M. S. Tavistoclc, 
Second January, 1853. 
Yoho, old salt! Neptun' ahoy! You don't forget, 
messmet, as you was to meet Dick Sparkler and Mark 
Porpuss on the fok'sle of the good ship Owssel ^Yords, 
Wednesday next, half -past four? Not you; for when 
did Stanfell ever pass his word to go anywheers and not 
come? Well. Belay, my heart of oak, belay! Come 
alongside the Tavistoch same day and hour, 'stead of 
Owssel Words. Hail your shipmets, and they'll drop over 
the side and join you, like two new shillings a-droppin' 
into the purser's pocket. Damn all lubberly boys and 
swabs, and give me the lad with the tarry trousers, which 
shines to me like di'mings bright! 



[^t. 41] 

To Mrs. Watson 
[deserted London] 

Boulogne, Wednesday, 
Twenty-first September, 1853. 
My dear Mrs. Watsoyi, 

The courier was unfortunately engaged. He offered to 
recommend another, but I had several applicants, and 
begged Mr. Wills to hold a grand review at the "House- 
hold Words" office, and select the man who is to bring 
me down as his victim. I am extremely sorry the man 
you recommend was not to be had. I should have been 
so delighted to take him. 

I am finishing "The Child's History," and clearing the 
way through "Household Words," in general, before I go 
on my trip. I forget whether I told you that Mr. Egg 
the painter and Mr. Collins are going with me. The 
other day I was in town. In case you should not have 
heard of the condition of that deserted village, I think it 
worth mentioning. All the streets of any note were un- 
paved, mountains high, and all the omnibuses were slid- 



378 CHAKLES DICKENS [^t. 41 

ing down alleys, and looking into the upper windows of 
small houses. At eleven o'clock one morning I was posi- 
tively alone in Bond Street. I went to one of my tailors, 
and he was at Brighton. A smutty-faced woman, among 
some gorgeous regimentals, half-finished, had not the 
least idea w^hen he would be back. I went to another of 
my tailors, and he was in an upper room, with open win- 
dows and surrounded by mignonette-boxes, playing the 
piano in the bosom of his family. I went to my hosier's, 
and two of the least presentable of "the young men" of 
that elegant establishment were playing at draughts in 
the back shop. (Likewise I beheld a porter-pot hastily 
concealed under a Turkish dressing-gown of a golden 
pattern.) I then went wandering about to look for some 
ingenious portmanteau, and near the corner of St. 
James's Street saw a solitary being sitting in a trunk- 
shop, absorbed in a book, which, on a close inspection, I 
found to be "Bleak House." I thought this looked well, 
and went in. And he really was more interested in see- 
ing me, when he knew who I was, than any face I had 
seen in any house, every house I knew being occupied by 
painters, including my own. I went to the Athenaeum 
that same night, to get my dinner, and it was shut up 
for repairs. I went home late, and had forgotten the key 
and was locked out. 

Preparations were made here, about six weeks ago, to 
receive the Emperor, who is not come yet. Meanwhile 
our countrymen (deluded in the first excitement) go 
about staring at these arrangements, and ivill persist in 
speaking an unknown tongue to the French people, who 
will speak English to them. 

We are all quite well. Going to drop two small boys 
here, at school with a former Eton tutor highly recom- 
mended to me. Charley was heard of a day or two ago. 
He says his professor "is very short-sighted, always in 
green spectacles, always drinking weak beer, always smok- 
ing a pipe, and always at work." The last qualification 
seems to appear to Charley the most astonishing one. 
Ever, my dear Mrs. Watson, 

Most affectionately yours, 

Charles Dickens. 



^t. 42] CHAELES DICKENS 379 

[^t. 42] 

To Arthur Kyland 

["dAVID COPPERFIELd" — "l CANNOT DISTURB IT"] 

Ta\istock House, Monday, 
Twenty-ninth January, 1855. 
My dear Mr. Ryland, 

I have been in the greatest difficulty — which I am not 
yet out of — to know what to, read at Birmingham. I fear 
the idea of next month is now impracticable. Which of 
two other months do you think would be preferable for 
your Birmingham objects? Next May, or next Decem- 
ber? 

Having already read two Christmas books at Birming- 
ham, I should like to get out of that restriction, and 
have a swim in the broader waters of one of my long 
books. I have been poring over ''Copperfield" (which is 
my favourite), with the idea of getting a reading out of 
it, to be called by some such name as "Young Housekeep- 
ing and Little Emily." But there is still the huge diffi- 
culty that I constructed the whole with immense pains, 
and have so woven it up and blended it together, that I 
cannot yet so separate the parts as to tell the story of 
David's married life with Dora, and the story of Mr. 
Peggotty's search for his niece, within the time. This 
is my object. If I could possibly bring it to bear, it 
would make a very attractive reading, with a strong in- 
terest in it, and a certain completeness. 

This is exactly the state of the case. I don't mind 
confiding to you, that I never can approach the book 
with perfect composure (it had such perfect possession 
of me when I wrote it), and that I no sooner begin to 
try to get it into this form, than I begin to read it all, 
and to feel that I cannot disturb it. I have not been 
unmindful of the agreement we made at parting, and I 
have sat staring at the backs of my books for an in- 
spiration. This project is the only one that I have con- 
stantly reverted to, and yet I have made no progress in 
it! 

Faithfully yours always, 

Charles Dickens. 



380 CHARLES DICKENS [^t. 44 

[^t. 43] 

To W. M. Thackeray 

["l SHALL NEVER FORGET YOUR WORDS"] 

Tavistock House, Friday Evening, 
Twenty-third March, 1855. 
2Iy dear Thackeray, 

I have read in The Times to-day an account of your 
last night's lecture, and cannot refrain from assuring you 
in all truth and earnestness that I am profoundly touched 
by your generous reference to me. I do not know how 
to tell you what a glow it spread over my heart. Out of 
its fulness I do entreat you to believe that I shall never 
forget your words of commendation. If you could wholly 
know at once how you have moved me, and how you have 
animated me, you would be the happier I am very cer- 
tain. 

Faithfully yours ever, 
Charles Dickens. 
[^t. 44] 

To Washington Irving 

[a breakfast at SAMUEL ROGERS's] 

Tavistock House, London, 
Fifth July, 1856. 
My dear Irving, 

If you knew how often I write to you individually and 
personally in my books, you would be no more surprised 
in seeing this note than you were in seeing me do my 
duty by that flowery julep (in what I dreamily appre- 
hend to have been a former state of existence) at Balti- 
more. 

Will you let me present to you a cousin of mine, Mr. 

B , who is associated with a merchant's house in New 

York? Of course he wants to see you, and know you. 
How can I wonder at that? How can anybody? 

I had a long talk with Leslie at the last Academy 
dinner (having previously been with him in Paris), and 
he told me that you were flourishing. I suppose you 
know that he wears a moustache — so do I for the matter 
of that, and a beard too — and that he looks like a por- 
trait of Don Quixote. 



^t. 46] CHAKLES DICKENS 381 

Holland House has four-ancl-twenty youthful pages in 
it now — twelve for my lord, and twelve for my lady; and 
no clergyman coils his leg up under his chair all dinner- 
time, and begins to uncurve it when the hostess goes. 
No wheeled chair runs smoothly in with that beaming 

face in it; and 's little cotton pocket-handkerchief 

helped to make (I believe) this very- sheet of paper. A 
half-sad, half-ludicrous story of Rogers is all I will sully 
it with. You know, I daresay, that for a year or so be- 
fore his death he wandered, and lost himself like one of 
the Children in the Wood, grown up there and grown 
down again. He had Mrs. Procter and Mrs. Carlyle to 
breakfast with him one morning — only those two. Both 
excessively talkative, very quick and clever, and bent oil 
entertaining him. When Mrs. Carlyle had flashed and 
shone before him for about three-quarters of an hour on 
one subject, he turned his poor old eyes on Mrs. Procter, 
and pointing to the brilliant discourser with his poor old 
finger, said (indignantly), '^Who is she?" Upon this, 
Mrs. Procter, cutting in, delivered (it is her own story) 
a neat* oration on the life and writings of Carlyle, and 
enlightened him in her happiest and airiest manner; all 
of which he heard, staring in the dreariest silence, and 
then said (indignanfly, as before), "And who are you?" 
Ever, my dear Irving, 

Most affectionately and truly yours, 
Charles Dickens. 

[Mt. 46] 

To Edmund Yates 
[troublesome "christl\n wirtues"] 
Tavistock House, Ta\istock Square, London, W. C.> 
Wednesday, Twenty-eighth April, 1858, 
My dear Yates, 

Eor a good many years I have suffered a great deal 
from charities, but never anything like what I suffer now. 
The amount of correspondence they inflict upon me is 
really incredible. But this is nothing. Benevolent men 
get behind the piers of the gates, lying in wait for my 
going out; and when I peep shrinkingly from my study- 
windows, I see their pot-bellied shadows projected on the 



382 CHARLES DICKENS [^t. 51 

gravel. Benevolent bullies drive up in hansom cabs (with 
engraved portraits of their benevolent institutions hang- 
ing over the aprons, like banners on their outward walls), 
and stay long at the door. -Benevolent area-sneaks get 
lost in the kitchens and are found to impede the circula- 
tion of the knife-cleaning machine. My man has been 
heard to say (at The Burton Arms) "that if it was a 
wicious place, well and good — that an't door work; but 
that wen all the Christian wirtues is always a-shoulderin' 
and a-helberin' on you in the 'all, a-tryin' to git past you 
and cut upstairs into master's room, why no wages as 
you couldn't name wouldn't make it up to you." 

Persecuted ever, 
Charles Dickens. 

[.^t. 51]- 

To John Bennett 
[a clock "with something on its works"] 

Gad^s Hill Place^ Hicham by Rochester,. Kent, 
Monday Night, Fourteenth September, 1863. 
My dear Sir, 

Since my hall clock was sent to your establishment to 
be cleaned it has gone (as indeed it always has) perfectly 
well, but has struck the hours with great reluctance, and 
after enduring internal agonies of a most distressing 
nature, it has now ceased striking altogether. Though a 
happy release for the clock, this is not convenient to the 
household. If you can send down any confidential per- 
son with whom the clock can confer, I think it may have 
something on its works that it would be glad to make a 
clean breast of. 

Faithfully yours, 
Charles Dickens. 



^t. 53] CHAKLES DICKENS 383 

[^t. 53] 

To Thomas Mittox 
[a railway wreck] 
Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Eochester, Kent, 
Tuesday, Thirteenth June, 1865. 
My dear Mitt on, 

I should have written to you yesterday or the day be- 
fore, if I had been quite up to writing. 

I was in the only carriage that did not go over into 
the stream. It was caught upon the turn by some of the 
ruin of the bridge, and hung suspended and balanced in 
an apparently impossible manner. Two ladies were my 
fellow-passengers, an old one and a young one. This is 
exactly what passed. You may judge from it the precise 
length of the suspense: Suddenly we were off the rail, 
and beating the ground as the car of a half -emptied 
balloon might. The old lady cried out, "My God!" and 
the young one screamed. I caught hold of them both 
(the old lady sat opposite and the young one on my left), 
and said: "We can't help ourselves, but we can be quiet 
and composed. Pray don't cry out." The old lady im- 
mediately answered: "Thank you. Pely upon me. Upon 
my soul I will be quiet." We were then all tilted down 
together in a corner of the carriage, and stopped. I said 
to them thereupon: "You may be sure nothing worse 
can happen. Our danger must be over. Will you re- 
main here without stirring, while I get out of the win- 
dow?" They both answered quite collectedly, "Yes," and 
I got out without the least notion what had happened. 
Fortunately I got out with great caution and stood upon 
the step. Looking down I saw the bridge gone, and 
nothing below me but the line of rail. Some people in 
the two other compartments were madly trying to plunge 
out of window, and had no idea that there was an open 
swampy field fifteen feet down below them, and nothing 
else! The two guards (one with his face cut) were run- 
ning up and down on the down side of the bridge (which 
was not torn up) quite wildly. I called out to them: 
"Look at me. Do stop an instant and look at me, and 
tell me whether you don't know me." One of them an- 
swered : "We know you very well, Mr. Dickens." "Then,'* 



384 CHAELES DICKENS [^t. 53 

I said, "my good fellow, for God's sake give me your 
key, and send one of those labourers here, and I'll empty 
this carriage." We did it quite safely, by means of a 
plank or two, and when it was done I saw all the rest 
of the train, except the two baggage vans, down in the 
stream. I got into the carriage again for my brandy 
flask, took off my tr'avelling hat for a basin, climbed down 
the brickwork, and filled my hat with water. 

Suddenly I came upon a staggering man covered with 
blood (I think he must have been flung clean out of his 
carriage), with such a frightful cut across the skull that 
I couldn't bear to look at him. I poured some water over 
his face and gave him some drink, then gave him some 
brandy, and laid him down on the grass, and he said, 
"I am gone," and died afterwards. Then I stumbled over 
a lady lying on her back against a little pollard-tree, with 
the blood streaming over her face (which was lead color) 
in a number of distinct little streams from- the head. I 
asked her if she could swallow a little brandy and she 
just nodded, and I gave her some and left her for some- 
body else. The next time I passed her she was dead. 
Then a man, examined at the inquest yesterday (who 
evidently had not the least remembrance of what really 
passed) came running up to me and implored me to help 
him find his wife, who was afterwards found dead. No 
imagination can conceive the ruin of the carriages, or 
the extraordinary weights under which the people were 
lying, or the complications into which they were twisted 
up among iron and wood, and m.ud and water. 

I don't want to be examined at the inquest and I don't 
want to write about it. I could do no good either way, 
and I could only seem to speak about myself, which, of 
course, I would rather not do". I am keeping very quiet 
here. I have a — I don't know what to call it — constitu- 
tional (I suppose) presence of mind, and was not in the 
least fluttered at the time. I instantly remembered that 
I had the MS. of a number with me, and clambered back 
into the carriage for it. But in writing these scanty 
words of recollection I feel the shake and am obliged to 
stop. 

Ever faithfully, 

Charles Dickens. 



^t. 55] CHAELES DICKENS 385 

[^t. 55] 

To Miss Dickens 
[second visit to America] 

Parker House^ Boston, 
Sunday, First December, 1867. 

I received yours of the Eighteenth November, yester- 
day. As I left Halifax in the Cuba that very day, you 
probably saw us telegraphed in The Times on the Nine- 
teenth. 

I think you had best in future (unless I give you in- 
timation to the -contrary) address your letters to me, at 
the Westminster Hotel, Irving Place, New York City. 
It is a more central position than this, and we are likely 
to be much more there than here. I am going to set up 
a brougham in New York, and keep my rooms at that 
hotel. 

They are said to be a very quiet audience here, appre- 
ciative but not demonstrative. I shall try to change their 
character a little. 

I have been going on very well. A horrible custom 
obtains in these parts of asking you to dinner somewhere 
at half -past two, and to supper somewhere else about 
eight. I have run this gauntlet more than once, and its 
effect is, that there is no day for any useful purpose, and 
that the length of the evening is multiplied by a hun- 
dred. Yesterday I dined with a club at half-past two, 
and came back here at half -past eight with a general im- 
pression that it was at least two o'clock in the morning. 
Two days before I dined with Longfellow at half-past 
two, and came back at eight, supposing it to be mid- 
night. To-day we have a state dinner-party in our rooms 
at six. Mr. and Mrs. Fields, and Mr. and Mrs. Bigelow. 
(He is a friend of Forster's, and was American Minister 
in Paris.) There are no negro waiters here, all the serv- 
ants are Irish — willing, but not able. The dinners and 
wines are very good. I keep our own rooms well ven- 
tilated by opening the windows, but no window is ever 
opened in the halls or passages, and they are so over- 
heated by a great furnace, that they make me faint and 
sick. The air is like that of a pre-Adamite ironing-day 
in full blast. Your respected parent is immensely popu- 



386 CHAKLES DICKENS [JEt. 56 

lar in Boston society, and its cordiality and unaffected 
heartiness are charming. I wish I could carry it with me. 

The leading New York papers have sent men over for 
to-morrow night with instructions to telegraph columns 
of descriptions. Great excitement and expectation every- 
where. Fields says he has looked forward to it so long 
that he knows that he will die at five minutes to eight. 

At the New York barriers, where the tickets are on 
sale and the people ranged as at the Paris theatres, specu- 
lators went up and down offering "twenty dollars for 
anybody's place." The money was in no case accepted. 
One man sold two tickets for the second, third, and 
fourth night "for one ticket for the first, fifty dollars" 
(about seven pounds ten shillings) "and a brandy cock- 
tail," which is an iced bitter drink. The weather has 
been rather muggy and languid until yesterday, when 
there was the coldest wind blowing that I ever felt. In 
the night it froze very hard, and to-day the sky is beau- 
tiful. 

Tuesday, Third December. 

Most magnificent reception last night, and most signal 
and complete success. Nothing could be more triumph- 
ant. The people will hear of nothing else and talk of 
nothing else. Nothing that was ever done here, they all 
agree, evoked any approach to such enthusiasm. I was 
quite as cool and quick as if I were reading at Green- 
wich, and went at it accordingly. My love to Mr. and 
Mrs. Hulkes and the boy, and to Mr. and Mrs. Malleson. 



[^t. 56] 

To Mrs. James T. Fields 
[welcome home from America] 

Gad's Hill, Higham by Rochester, Kent, 
Twenty-fifth May, 1868. 
My dear Mrs. Fields, 

As you ask me about the dogs, I begin with them. 
When I came down first, I came to Gravesend, five miles 
off. The two Newfoundland dogs, coming to meet me 
with the usual carriage and the usual driver, and be- 
holding me coming in my usual dress out at the usual 



.^t. 56] CHARLES DICKENS 387 

door, it struck me that their recollection of my having 
been absent for any unusual time was at once cancelled. 
They behaved (they are both young dogs) exactly in their 
usual manner; coming behind the basket phaeton as we 
trotted along, and lifting their heads to have their ears 
pulled — a special attention which they receive from no 
one else. But when I drove into the stable-yard, Linda 
(the St. Bernard) was greatly excited; weeping pro- 
fusely, and throwing herself on her back that she might 
caress my foot with her great fore-paws. Mamie's little 
dog, too, Mrs. Bouncer, barked in the greatest agitation 
on being called down and asked by Mamie, ''Who is this ?" 
and tore round and round me, like the dog in the Faust 
outlines. You must know that all the farmers turned 
out on the road in their market-chaises to say, "Welcome 
home, sir!" and that all the houses along the road were 
dressed with flags; and that our servants, to cut out the 
rest, had dressed this house so that every brick of it was 
hidden. They had asked Mamie's permission to "ring the 
alarm-bell" (!) when master drove up, but Mamie, having 
some slight idea that that compliment might awaken 
master's sense of the ludicrous, had recommended bell 
abstinence. But on Sunday the village choir (which in- 
cludes the bell-ringers) made amends. After some un- 
usually brief pious reflections in the crowns of their hats 
at the end of the sermon, the ringers bolted out, and rang 
like mad until I got home. There had been a conspiracy 
among the villagers to take the horse out, if I had come 
to our o-^m station, and draw me here. Mamie and 
Georgy had got wind of it and warned me. 

Divers birds sing here all day, and the nightingales 
all night ! The place is lovely, and in perfect order. I 
have put five mirrors in the Swiss chalet (where I write) 
and they reflect and refract in all kinds of ways the 
leaves that are quivering at the windows, and the great 
fields of waving corn, and the sail-dotted river. My room 
is up among the branches of the trees; and the birds and 
the butterflies fly in and out, and the green branches 
shoot in, at the open windows, and the lights and shadows 
of the clouds come and go with the rest of the company. 
The scent of the flowers, and indeed of everything that 
is growing for miles and miles, is most delicious. 



f88 CHAELES DICKENS [^t. 56 

Dolby (who sends a word of messages) found his wife 
much better than he expected, and the children (won- 
derful to relate!) perfect. The little girl winds up her 
prayers every night with a special commendation to 
Heaven of me and the pony — as if I must mount him 
to get there! 1 dine with Dolby (I was going to write 
''him," but found it would look as if I were going to 
dine with the pony) at Greenwich this very day, and if 
your ears do not burn from six to nine this evening, then 
the Atlantic is a non-conductor. 

It is time I should explain the otherwise inexplicable 
enclosure. Will you tell Fields, with my love (I suppose 
he hasn't used all the pens yet?), that I think there is 
in Tremont Street a set of my books, sent out by Chap- 
man, not arrived when I departed. Such set of the im- 
mortal works of our illustrious, etc., is designed for the 
gentleman to whom the enclosure is addressed. If T., F. 
and Co., will kindly forward the set (carriage paid) with 
the enclosure to 's address, I will invoke new bless- 
ings on their heads, and will get Dolby's little daughter 
to mention them nightly. 

"No Thoroughfare" is very shortly coming out in 
Paris, where it is now in active rehearsal. It is still play- 
ing here, but without Fechter, who has been very ill. 
The doctor's dismissal of him to Paris, however, and his 
getting better there, enables him to get up the play there. 
He and Wilkie missed so many pieces of stage-effect 
here, that, unless I am quite satisfied with his report, I 
shall go over and try my stage-managerial hand at the 
Vaudeville Theatre. 

Ever, my dear Mrs. Fields, 

Your most affectionate friend, 

Charles Dickens. 



JEt. 56] CHAKLES DICKENS 389 

[^t. 56] 

To Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens* 
[a letter of good counsel] 

[1868] 
My dearest Plorn, 

I write this note to-day because your going away is 
much upon my mind, and because I want you to have a 
few parting words from me to think of now and then at 
quiet times. I need not tell you that I love you dearly, 
and am very, very sorry in my heart to part with you. 
But this life is half made up of partings, and these pains 
must be borne. It is my comfort and my sincere con- 
viction that you are going to try the life for which you 
are best fitted. I think its freedom and wildness more 
suited to you than any experiment in a study or office 
would ever have been; and without that training, you 
could have followed no other suitable occupation. 

What you have already wanted until now has been a 
sev, steady, constant purpose. I therefore exhort you to 
persevere in a thorough determination to do whatever 
you have to do as well as you can do it. I was not so 
old as you are now when I first had to win my food, and 
do this out of this determination, and I have never 
slackened in it since. 

Never take a mean advantage of anyone in any trans- 
action, and never be hard upon people who are in your 
power. Try to do to others, as you would have them do 
to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. 
It is much better for you that they should fail in obey- 
ing the greatest rule laid down by our Saviour, than that 
you should. 

I put a New Testament among your books, for the 
very same reasons, and with the very same hopes that 
made me write an easy account of it for you, when you 
were a little child ; because it is the best book that ever 
was or will be known in the world, and because it teaches 
you the best lessons by which any human creature who 
tries to be truthful and faithful to duty can possibly be 
guided. As your brothers have gone away, one by one, 

* His 3-oungest son, leaving for Australia. 



390 EGBERT BROWNING [^t. 44 

I have written to each such words as I am now writing 
to you, and have entreated them all to guide themselves by 
this book, putting aside the interpretations and inven- 
tions of men. 

You will remember that you have never at home been 
wearied about religious observances or mere formalities. 
I have always been anxious not to weary my children 
with such things before they are old enough to form 
opinions respecting them. You will therefore under- 
stand the better that I now most solemnly impress upon 
you the truth and beauty of the Christian religion, as it 
came from Christ Himself, and the impossibility of your 
going far wrong if you humbly but heartily respect it. 

Gnly one thing more on this head. The more we are 
in earnest as to feeling it, the less we are disposed to 
hold forth about it. Never abandon the wholesome prac- 
tice of saying your own private prayers, night and morn- 
ing. I have never abandoned it myself, and I know the 
comfort of it. 

I hope you will always be able to say in after life, that 
you had a kind father. .You cannot show your affection 
for him so well, or make him so happy, as by doing your 
duty. 

Your aifectionate Father, 

Charles Dickens. 



[^t. 44] EGBERT BROWNING 

1812-1889 

To Mrs. Martin 

[the death of MRS. browning's father] 

. Florence, May 3, 1857. 
My dear Mrs. Martin, — 

Truest thanks for your letter. We had the intelligence 
from George last Thursday week, having been only pre- 
pared for the illness by a note received from Arabel the 
day before. Ba* was sadly affected at first; miserable 
to see and hear. After a few days tears came to her 
relief. She is now very weak and prostrated, but im- 

* Mrs. Browning. 



^t. 46] EGBERT BROWNING 391 

proving in strength of body and mind: I have no fear 
for the result. I suppose you know, at least, the very 
little that we know; and how unaware poor Mr. Barrett 
was of his imminent death: ''he bade them," says Arabel, 
''make him comfortable for the night, but a moment be- 
fore the last." And he had dismissed her and her aunt 
about an hour before, with a cheerful or careless word 
about "wishing them good night." So it is all over now, 
all hope of better things, or a kind answer to entreaties 
such as I have seen Ba write in the bitterness of her 
heart. There must have been something in the organi- 
sation, or education, at least, that would account for and 
extenuate all this; but it has caused grief enough, I 
know; and now here is a new grief not likely'' to subside 
very soon. Not that Ba is other than reasonable and 
just to herself in the matter: she does not reproach her- 
self at all; it is all mere grief, as I say, that this should 
have been so; and I sympathise with her there. 

George wrote very affectionately to tell me; and dear, 
admirable Arabel sent a note the very next day to prove 
to Ba that there was nothing to fear on her account. 
Since then we have heard nothing. The funeral was to 
take place in Herefordshire. We had just made up our 
minds to go on no account to England this year. Ba 
felt the restraint on her too horrible to bear. I will, or 
she will, no doubt, write and tell you of herself; and 
you must write, dear Mrs. Martin, will you not? 
Kindest regard to Mr. Martin and all. 

Yours faithfully ever, 

Robert Browning. 
[^t. 46] 

To Mr. Ruskin 
[a postscript to a letter by his wife] 

[RoME^ 43 BoccA Di Leone, 

January 1, 1859.] 

I am to say something, dear Ruskin; it shall be only 

the best of wishes for this and all other years; go on 

again like the noble and dear man you are to us all, 

\ and especially to us two out of them all. Whenever I 

\ chance on an extract, a report, it lights up the dull 

;, newspaper stuff wrapt round it and makes me glad at 



392 KOBEKT BKOWNING [.^t. 49 

heart and clearer in head. We, for our part, have just 
sent off a corrected "Aurora Leigh," which is the better 
for a deal of pains, we hope, and my wife deserves. There 
will be a portrait from a photograph done at Havre with- 
out retouching — good, I think. Truest love to you and 
yours — your father and mother. Do help us by a word 
every now and then. 

Affectionately yours, 

R. B. 
[^t. 49] 

To Miss Haworth 

[the death of 3IRS. BROWNIXO] 

Florence, July 20, 1861. 
My dear Friend, — 

I well know you feel as you say, for her once and for 
me now. Isa Blagden, perfect in all kindness to me, 
will have told you something perhaps — and one day I 
shall see you and be able to tell you myself as much 
as I can. The main comfort is that she suffered very 
little pain, none beside that ordinarily attending the sim- 
ple attacks of cold and cough she was subject to — had 
no presentiment of the result wdiatever, and was conse- 
quently spared the misery of knowing she was about to 
leave us ; she was smilingly assuring me she was "better," 
"quite comfortable — if I would but come to bed," to within 
a few minutes of the last. I think I foreboded evil at 
Rome, certainly from the beginning of the week's illness 
— but when I reasoned about it, there was no justifying 
fear — she said on the last evening "it is merely the old 
attack, not so severe a one as that of two years ago — 
there is no doubt I shall soon recover," and we talked 
over plans for the summer, and next year. I sent the 
servants away and her maid to bed — so little reason for 
disquietude did there seem. Through the night she slept 
heavily, and brokenly — that was the bad sign — but then 
she would sit up, take her medicine, say unrepeatable 
things to me and sleep again. At four o'clock there were 
symptoms that alarmed me; I called the maid and sent 
for the doctor. She smiled as I proposed to bathe her 
feet, "Well, you are determined to make an exaggerated 
case of it!" Then came what my heart will keep till I 



Mt. 49] EGBERT BROWNING 393 

see her again and longer — the most perfect expression of 
her love to me within my whole knowledge of her. Al- 
ways smiling, happily, and with a face like a girl's — and 
in a few minutes she died in my arms; her head on my 
cheek. These incidents so sustain me that I tell them to 
her beloved ones as their right: there was no lingering, 
nor acute pain, nor consciousness of separation, but God 
took her to himself as you would lift a sleeping child 
from a dark, uneasy bed into your arms and the light. 
Thank God. Annunziata thought by her earnest ways 
with me, happy and smiling as they were, that she must 
have been aware of our parting's approach — but she was 
quite conscious, had words at command, and yet did not 
even speak of Peni, who was in the next room. Her last 
word was when I asked "How do you feel?" — "Beautiful." 
You kiTow I have her dearest wishes and interests to 
attend to at once — her child to care for, educate, estab- 
lish properly; and my own life to fulfil as properly, — all 
just as she would require were she here. I shall leave 
Italy altogether for years — go to London for a few days' 
talk with Arabel — then go to my father and begin to try 
leisurely what will be the best for Peni — but no more 
"housekeeping" for me, even with my family. I shall 
grow, still, I hope — but my root is taken and remains. 

I know you always loved her, and me too in my degree. 
I shall always be grateful to those who loved her, and 
that, I repeat, you did. 

She was, and is, lamented with extraordinary demon- 
strations, if one consider it. The Italians seem to have 
understood her by an instinct. I have received strange 
kindness from everybody. Pen is very well — very dear 
and good, anxious to comfort me as he calls it. He 
can't know his loss yet. After years, his will be worse 
than mine — he will want what he never had — that is, for 
the time when he could be helped by her wisdom, and 
genius and piety — I have had everything and shall not 
forget. 

God bless you, dear friend. I believe I shall set out 
in a week. Isa goes with me — dear, true heart. 'You, 
too, would do what you could for us were you here and 
your assistance needful. A letter from you came a day 
or two before the end — she made me enquire about the 



394 ELIZABETH B. BROWNING [.'Et. 40 

Erescobaldi Palace for you, — Isa wrote to you in conse- 
quence. I shall be heard of at 151, rue de Grenelle, 
St. Germain. 

Faithfully and affectionately yours, 

Robert Browning. 



.[^t.40] 

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 

1806-1861 
To Mrs. Martin 

[her marriage to ROBERT BROWNING] 

COLLEGIO FeRDINANDO, PiSA, 

October 20 [?], 1846. 
My dearest Mrs. Martin, — 

Will you believe that I began a letter to you before I 
took this step, to give you the whole story of the impulses 
towards it, feeling strongly that I owed what I considered 
my justification to such dear friends as yourself and Mr. 
Martin, that you might not hastily conclude that you had 
thrown away upon one who was quite unworthy the regard 
of years? I had begun such a letter — when, by the plan 
of going to Little Bookham, my plans were all hurried 
forward — changed — driven prematurely into action, and 
the last hours of agitation and deep anguish — for it was 
the deepest of its kind, to leave Wimpole Street and those 
whom I tenderly loved — so would not admit of my writing 
or thinking: only I was able to think that my beloved 
sisters would send you some account of me when I was 
gone. And now I hear from them that your generosity 
has not waited for a letter from me to do its best for 
me, and that instead of being vexed, as you might well 
be, at my leaving England without a word sent to you, 
you have used kind offices in my behalf, you have been 
more than the generous and affectionate friend I always 
considered you. So my first words must be that I am 
deeply grateful to you, my very dear friend, and that to 
the last moment of my life I shall remember the claim 
you have on my gratitude. Generous people are inclined 
to acquit generously; but it has been very painful to me 
to observe that with all my mere friends I have found 



^Et. 40] ELIZABETH B. BROWNING 395 

more sympathy and trust, than in those who are of my 
own household and who have been daily witnesses of my 
life. I do not say this for papa, who is peculiar and in 

a peculiar position ; but it pained me that , who knew 

all that passed last year — for instance, about Pisa — who 
knew that the alternative of making a single effort to 
secure my health during the winter was the severe dis- 
pleasure I have incurred now, and that the fruit of 
yielding myself a prisoner was the sense of being of no 
use nor comfort to any soul, papa having given up com- 
ing to see me except for five minutes a day; , who 

said to me with his own lips, "He does not love you — 
do not think it" (said and repeated it two months ago) — 

that should now turn round and reproach me for want 

of affection towards my family, for not letting myself 
drop like a dead weight into the abyss, a sacrifice without 
an object and expiation — this did surprise me and pain 
me — pained me more than all papa's dreadful words. 
But the personal feeling is nearer with most of us than 
the tenderest feeling for another; and my family had 
been so accustomed to the idea of my living on and on 
in that room, that while my heart was eating itself, their 
love for me was consoled, and at last the evil grew scarcely 
perceptible. It was no want of love in them, and quite 
•natural in itself: we all get used to the thought of a 
tomb; and I was buried, that was the whole. It was a 
little thing even for myself a short time ago, and really 
it would be a pneumatological curiosity if I could describe 
and let you see how perfectly for years together, after* 
what broke my heart at Torquay, I lived on the outside 
of my own life, blindly and darkly from day to day, as 
completely dead to hope of any kind as if I had my 
face against a grave, never feeling a personal instinct, 
taking trains of thought to carry out as an occupation 
absolutely indifferent to the me which is in every human 
being. Nobody quite understood this of m^e, because I 
am not morally a coward, and have a hatred of all the 
forms of audible groaning. But God knows what is 
within, and how utterly I had abdicated myself and 
thought it not worth while to put out my finger to touch 

* The death by drowning of her brother. 



396 ' ELIZABETH B. BROWNING [^t. 40 

my share of life. Even my poetry, which suddenly grew 
an interest, was a thing on the outside of me, a thing 
to be done, and then done! What people said of it did 
not touch me. A thoroughly morbid and desolate state 
it was, which I look back now to with the sort of horror 
with which one would look to one's graveclothes, if one 
had been clothed in them by mistake during a trance. 

And now I will tell you. It is nearly two years ago 
since I have known Mr. Browning. Mr. Kenyon wished 
to bring him to see me five years ago, as one of the lions 
of London who roared the gentlest and was best worth 
my knowing; but I refused then, in my blind dislike to 
seeing strangers. Immediately, however, after the pub- 
lication of my last volumes, he wrote to me, and we had 
a correspondence which ended in my agreeing to receive 
him as I never had received any other man. I did not 
know why, but it was utterly impossible for me to refuse 
to receive him, though I consented against my will. He 
writes the most exquisite letters possible, and has a way 
of putting things which I have not, a way of putting 
aside — so he came. He came, and with our personal ac- 
quaintance began his attachment for me, a sort of in- 
fatuation call it, which resisted the various denials which 
were my plain duty at the beginning, and has persisted 
past them all. I began with a grave assurance that I 
was in an exceptional position and saw him just in con- 
sequence of it, and that if ever he recurred to that sub- 
ject again I never could see him again while I lived; 
and he believed me and was silent. To my mind, in- 
deed, it was a bare impulse — a generous man of quick 
sympathies taking up a sudden interest with both hands! 
So I thought; but in the meantime the letters and the 
visits rained down more and more, and in every one 
there was something which was too slight to analyse and 
notice, but too decided not to be understood; so that at 
last, when the "proposed respect" of the silence gave 
way, it was rather less dangerous. So then I showed 
him how he was throwing into the ashes his best affec- 
tions — how the comnioa gifts of youth and cheerfulness 
were behind me — how I had not strength, even of heart, 
for the ordinary duties of life — everything I told him 
and showed him. "Look at this — and this — and this," 



^t. 40] ELIZABETH B. BROWNING 397 

throwing down all my disadvantages. To which he did 
not answer by a single compliment, but simply that he 
had not then to choose, and that I might be right or he 
might be right, he was not there to decide; but that he 
loved me and should to his last hour: He said that the 
freshness of youth had passed with him. also, and that he 
had studied the world out of books and seen many women, 
yet had never loved one until he had seen me. That he 
knew himself, and knew that, if ever so repulsed, he 
should love me to his last hour — it should be first and 
last. At the same time, he would not tease me, he would 
wait twenty years if I pleased, and then, if life lasted 
so long, for both of us, then when it was ending perhaps, 
I might understand him and feel that I might have 
trusted him. For my health, he had believed when he 
first spoke that I was suffering from an incurable injury 
of the spine, and that he never could hope to see me 
stand up before his face, and he appealed to my womanly 
sense of what a pure attachment should be — whether such 
a circumstance, if it had been true, was inconsistent with 
it. He preferred, he said, of free and deliberate choice, 
to be allowed to sit only an hour a day by my side, to 
the fulfilment of the brightest dream which should ex- 
clude me, in any possible world. 

I tell you so much, my ever dear friend, that you may 
see the manner of man I have had to do with, and the 
sort of attachment which for nearly two years has been 
drawing and winning me. I know better than any in the 
world, indeed, what Mr. Kenyon once unconsciously said 
before me — that "Robert Browning is great in every- 
thing.'' Then, when you think how this element of an 
affection so pure and persistent, cast into my dreary life, 
must have acted on it — how little by little I was drawn 
into the persuasion that something was left, and that 
still I could do something to the happiness of another — 
and he what he was, for I have deprived myself of the 
privilege of praising him — then it seemed worth while to 
take up with that unusual energy (for me!), expended in 
vain last year, the advice of the physicians that I should 
go to a warm climate for the winter. Then came the 
Pisa conflict of last year. For years I had looked with 
a sort of indifferent expectation towards Italy, knowing 



398 ELIZABETH B. BKOWNING [^t. 40 

and feeling that I should escape there the annual relapse, 
yet, with that laisser alter manner which had become a 
habit to me, unable to form a definite wish about it. 
But last year, when all this happened to me, and I was 
better than usual in the summer, I wished to make the 
experiment — to live the experiment out, and see whether 
there was hope for me or not hope. Then came Dr. 
Chambers, with his encouraging opinion. "I wanted sim- 
ply a warm climate and air," he said; "I might be well if 
I pleased." Followed what you know — or do not pre- 
cisely know — the pain of it was acutely felt by me; for 
I never had doubted but that papa would catch at any 
human chance of restoring my health. I was under the 
delusion always that the difficulty of making such trials 
lay in me, and not in him. His manner of acting towards 
me last summer was one of the most painful griefs of 
my life, because it involved a disappointment in the af- 
fections: My dear father is a very peculiar person. He 
is naturally stern, and has exaggerated notions of au- 
thority, but these things go with high and noble qualities ; 
and as for feeling, the water is under the rock, and I 
had faith. Yes, and have it. I admire such qualities 
as he has — fortitude, integrity. I loved him for his 
courage in adverse circumstances which were yet felt by 
him more literally than I could feel them. Always he 
has had the greatest power over my heart, because I am 
of those weak women who reverence strong men. By a 
word he might have bound me to him hand and foot. 
Never has he spoken a gentle word to me or looked a kind 
look which has not made in me large results of gratitude, 
and throughout my illness the sound of his step on the 
stairs has had the power of quickening my pulse — I have 
loved him so and love him. Now if he had said last sum- 
mer that he was reluctant for me to leave him — if he 
had even allowed me to think 'by mistalce that his affec- 
tion for me was the motive of such reluctance — I was 
ready to give up Pisa in a moment, and I told him as 
much. Whatever my new impulses towards life were, my 
love for him (taken so) would have resisted all — I loved 
him so dearly. But his course was otherwise, quite other- 
wise, and I was wounded to the bottom of my heart — 
cast off when I was ready to cling to him. In the mean- 



^t. 40] ELIZABETH B. BROWNING 399 

while, at my side was another; I was driven and I was 
drawn. Then at last I said, "If you like to let this 
winter decide it, you may. I will allow of no promises 
nor engagement. I cannot go to Italy, and I know, as 
nearly as a human creature can know any fact, that I 
shall be ill again through the influence of this English 
winter. If I am, you will see plainer the foolishness of 
this persistence; if I am not, I will do what you please." 
And his answer was, "If you are ill and keep your resolu- 
tion of not marrying me under those circumstances, I 
will keep mine and love you till God shall take us both." 
This was in last autumn, and the winter came with its 
miraculous mildness, as you know, and I was saved as I 
dared not hope; my word therefore was claimed in the 
spring. Now do you understand, and will you feel for 
me? An application to my father was certainly the obvi- 
ous course, if it had not been for his peculiar nature and 
my peculiar position. But there is no speculation in 
the case; it is a matter of knowledge that if Robert had 
applied to him in the first instance he would have been 
forbidden the house without a moment's scruple; and if 
in the last (as my sisters thought best as a respectable 
form), I should have been incapacitated from any after- 
exertion by the horrible scenes to which, as a thing of 
course, I should have been exposed. Papa will not bear 
some subjects, it is a thing 'known; his peculiarity takes 
that ground to the largest. Not one of his children will 
ever marry without a breach, which we all know, though 
he probably does not — deceiving himself in a setting up of 
obstacles, whereas the real obstacle is in his own mind. 
In my case there was, or would have been, a great deal 
of apparent reason to hold by; my health would have 
been motive enough — ostensible motive. I see that pre- 
cisely as others may see it. Indeed, if I were charged 
now with want of generosity for casting myself so, a 
dead burden, on the man I love, nothing of the sort 
could surprise me. It was what occurred to myself, that 
thought was, and what occasioned a long struggle and 
months of agitation, and which nothing could have over- 
come but the very uncommon affection of a very un- 
common person, reasoning out to me the great fact of 
love making its own level. As to vanitv and selfishness 



400 ELIZABETH B. BKOWNING [^t. 40 

blinding me, certainly I may have made a mistake, and 
the future may prove it, but still more certainly I was not 
blinded so. On the contrary, never have I been more 
humbled, and never less in danger of considering any 
personal pitiful advantage, than throughout this affair. 
You, who are generous and a woman, will believe this 
of me, even if you do not comprehend the hahit I had 
fallen into of casting aside the consideration of possible 
happiness of my own. But I was speaking of papa. 
Obvious it was that the application to him was a mere 
form. I knew the result of it. I had made up my mind 
to act upon my full right of taking my own way. I had 
long believed such an act (the most strictly personal act 
of one's life) to be within the rights of every person of 
mature age, man or woman, and I had resolved to exer- 
cise that right in my own case by a resolution which 
had slowly ripened. All the other doors of life were 
shut to me, and shut me in as in a prison, and only 
before this door stood one whom I loved best and who 
loved me best, and who invited me out through it for 
the good's sake which he thought I could do him. ISTow 
if for the sake of the mere form I had applied to my 
father, and if, as he would have done directly, he had 
set up his "curse" against the step I proposed to take, 
would it have been doing otherwise than placing a knife 
in his hand ? A few years ago, merely through the rever- 
beration of what he said to another on a subject like 
this, I fell on the floor in a fainting fit, and was almost 
delirious afterwards. I cannot bear some words. I- would 
much rather have blows without them. In my actual 
state of nerves and physical weakness, it would have been 
the sacrifice of my whole life — of my convictions, of my 
affections, and, above all, of what the person dearest to 
me persisted in calling his life, and the good of it — if I 
had observed that "form." Therefore, wrong or right, I 
determined not to observe it, and, wrong or right, I did 
and do consider that in not doing so I sinned against no 
duty. That I was constrained to act clandestinely, and 
did not choose to do so, God is witness, and will set 
it down as my heavy misfortune and not my fault. Also, 
up to the very last act we stood in the light of day for 
the whole world, if it pleased, to judge us. I never saw 



JEt. 40] ELIZABETH B. BEOWNING 401 

him out of the Wimpole Street house ; he came twice a 
week to see me — or rather, three times in the fortnight, 
openly in the sight of all, and this for nearly two years, 
and neither more nor less. Some jests used to be passed 
upon us by my brothers, and I allowed them without a 
word, but it would have been infamous in me to have 
taken any into my confidence who would have suffered, 
as a direct consequence, a blighting of his own prospects. 
My secrecy towards them all was my simple duty towards 
them all, and what they call want of affection was an 
affectionate consideration for them. My sisters did in- 
deed know the truth to a certain point. They knew of the 
attachment and engagement — I could not help that — but 
the whole of the event I kept frorh them with a strength 
and resolution which really I did not know to be in me, 
and of which nothing but a sense of the injury to be 
done to them by a fuller confidence, and my tender 
gratitude and attachment to them for all their love and 
goodness, could have rendered me capable. Their faith 
in me, and undeviating affection for me, I shall be 
grateful for to the end of my existence, and to the extent 
of my power of feeling gratitude. My dearest sisters! — 
especialhf, let me say, my own beloved Arabel, who, with 
no consolation except the exercise of a most generous 
tenderness, has looked only to what she considered my 
good — never doubting me, never swerving for one instant 
in her love for me. May God reward her as I cannot. 
Dearest Henrietta loves me too, but loses less in me, and 
has reasons for not misjudging me. But both my sisters 
have been faultless in their bearing towards me, and 
never did I love them so tenderly as I love them now. 

The only time I met R. B. clandestinely was in the 
parish church, where we were married before two wit- 
nesses — it was the first and only time. I looked, he says, 
more dead than alive, and can well believe it, f or T all 
but fainted on the way, and had to stop for sal volatile 
at a chemist's shop. The support through it all was 
my trust in him, for no woman who ever committed a 
like act of trust has had stronger motives to hold by. 
Now may I not tell you that his genius, and all but 
miraculous attainments, are the least things in him, the 
moral nature being of the very noblest, as all who ever 



402 ELIZABETH B. BROWNING [^t. 40 

knew him admit? Then he has had that wide experience 
of men which ends by throwing the mind back on itself 
and God; there is nothing incomplete in him, except as 
all humanity is incompleteness, the only wonder is how 
such a man, whom any woman could have loved, should 
have loved me; but men of genius, you know, are apt to 
love with their imagination. Then there is something in 
the sympathy, the strange straight sympathy which unites 
us on all subjects. If it were not that I look up to him, 
we should be too alike to be together perhaps, but I know 
my place better than he does, who is too humble. Oh, 
you cannot think how well we get on after six -weeks 
of marriage.* If I suffer again it will not be through 
liim. Some day, dearest Mrs. Martin, I will show you 
and dear Mr. Martin how his prophecy was fulfilled, sav- 
ing some picturesque particulars. I did not know before 
that Saul was among the prophets. 

My poor husband suffered very much from the con- 
straint imposed on him by my position, and did, for the 
first time in his life, for my sake do that in secret which 
he could not speak upon the housetops. Mea culpa all 
of it! If one of us two is to be blamed, it is I, at whose 
representation of circumstances he submitted to do vio- 
lence to his own self-resj^ect. I would not suffer him to 
tell even our dear common friend Mr. Kenyon. I felt 
that it would be throwing on dear Mr. Kenyon a painful 
responsibility, and involve him in the blame ready to fall. 
And dear dear Mr. Kenyon, like the noble, generous 
friend I love so deservedly, comprehends all at a word, 
sends us not his forgiveness, but his sympathy, his affec- 
tion, the kindest words which can be written ! I cannot 
tell you all his inexpressible kindness to us both. He 
justifies us to the uttermost, and, in that, all the grateful 
attachment we had, each on our side, so long professed 
tovv^ards him. Indeed, in a note I had from him yester- 
day, he uses this strong expression after gladly speaking 
of pur successful journey: "I considered that you had 
perilled your life upon this undertaking, and, reflecting 
upon your last position, I thought that you had done well." 
But my life was not perilled in the journey. The agita- 
tion and fatigue were evils, to be sure, and Mrs. Jameson, 
who met us in Paris by a happy accident, thought me 



JEt. 40] ELIZABETH B. BROWNING 403 

"looking horribly ill" at first, and persuaded us to rest 
there for a week on the promise of accompanying us 
herself to Pisa to help Robert to take care of me. He, 
who was in a fit of terror about me, agreed at once, and 
so she came with us, she and her young niece, and her 
kindness leaves us both very grateful. So kind she was, 
and is — for still she is in Pisa — opening her arms to us 
and calling us "children of light" instead of ugly names, 
and declaring that she should have been "proud" to have 
had anything to do with our marriage. Indeed, we hear 
every day kind speeches and messages from people such 
as Mr. Chorley of the "Athenaeum," who "has tears in 
his eyes," Monckton Milnes, Barry Cornwall, and other 
friends of my husband's, but who only know me by my 
books, and I want the love and sympathy of those who 
love me and whom I love. I was talking of the influence 
of the journey. The change of air has done me wonderful 
good notwithstanding the fatigue, and I am renewed to 
the point of being able to throw off most of my invalid 
habits, and of walking quite like a woman. Mrs. Jame- 
son said the other day, "You are not improved, you are 
transformed/' We have most comfortable rooms here at 
Pisa, and have taken them for six months, in the best 
situation for health, and close to the Duomo and Leaning 
Tower. It is a beautiful, solemn city, and we have made 
acquaintance with Professor Ferucci, who is about to 
admit us to [a sight] of the [University Lib]rary. We 
shall certainly [spend] next summer in Italy somewhere, 
and [talk] of Rome for the next winter, but, of course, 
this is all in air. Let me hear from you, dearest Mrs. 
Martin, and direct "M. Browning, Poste Restante, Pisa" 
— it is best. Just before we left Paris I wrote to my 
aunt Jane, and from Marseilles to Bummy, but from 
neither have I heard yet. 

With best love to dearest Mr. Martin, ever both my 
dear kind friends. 

Your affectionate and grateful 

Ba. 



404 ELIZABETH B. BROWNING [^t. 46 

[^t. 46] 

To Miss Mitford 

[GEORGE sand] 

138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysees, 
April 7, 1852. 

What a time seems to have passed since I wrote to you, 
my ever loved friend. Again and again I have been on 
the point of writing, and something has stopped me al- 
ways. I have wished to wait till I had more about this 
and that to gossip of, and so the time went on. Now I 
am getting impatient to have news of you, and to learn 
whether the lovely spring has brought you any good yet 
as to health and strength. Don't take vengeance on my 
silence, but write, write. . . . 

Yes, I want to see Beranger, and so does Robert. George 
Sand we came to know a great deal more of. I think 
Robert saw her six times. Once he met her near the 
Tuileries, offered her his arm, and walked with her the 
whole length of the gardens. She was not on that occa- 
sion looking as well as usual, being a little too much 
"endimanchee" in terrestrial lavenders and super-celestial 
blues — not, in fact, dressed with the remarkable taste 
which he has seen in her at other times. Her usual cos- 
tume is both pretty and quiet, and the fashionable waist- 
coat and jacket (which are a spectacle in all the "Ladies' 
Companions" of the day) make the only approach to 
masculine w-earings to be observed in her. She has great 
nicety and refinement in her personal ways, I think, and 
the cigarette is really a feminine weapon if properly un- 
derstood. Ah, but I didn't see her smoke. I was unfor- 
tunate. I could only go with Robert three times to her 
house, and once she was out. He was really very good 
and kind to let me go at all, after he found the sort of 
society rampant around her. He didn't like it extremely, 
but, being the prince of husbands, he was lenient to my 
desires and yielded the point. She seems to live in the 
abomination of desolation, as far as regards society — 
crowds of ill-bred men who adore her a genoux has, betwixt 
a puff of smoke and an ejection of saliva. Society of the 
ragged Red diluted with the lower theatrical. She her- 
self so different, so apart, as alone in her melancholy 



^t. 46] ELIZABETH B. BKOWNING 405 

disdain! I was deeply interested in that poor woman, I 
felt a profound compassion for her. I did not mind much 
the Greek in Greek costume who tutoyed her, and kissed 
her, I believe, so Robert said; or the other vulgar man 
of the theatre who went down on his knees and called her 
''sublime." "Caprice d'amitie," said she, with her quiet, 
gentle scorn. A noble woman under the mud, be certain. 
I would kneel down to her, too, if she would leave it all, 
throw it off, and be herself as God made her. But she 
would not care for my kneeling; she does not care for 
me. Perhaps she doesn't care for anybody by this tim.e — 
who knows ? She wrote one, or two, or three kind notes, 
to me, and promised to "venir m'embrasser" before she 
left Paris; but she did not come. We both tried hard 
to please her, and she told a friend of ours that she 
''liked us"; only we always felt that we couldn't pene- 
trate — couldn't really touch her — it was all vairi. Her 
play failed, though full of talent. It didn't draw, and 
was withdrawn accordingly. I wish she would keep to 
her romances, in which her real power lies. . . . 

Alfred De Musset was to have been at M. Buloz's, where 
Robert was a week ago, on purpose to meet him, but he 
was prevented in some way. His brother, Paul De Musset, 
a very different person, was there instead — but we hope 
to have Alfred on another occasion. Do you know his 
poems? He is not capable of large grasps, but he has 
poet's life and blood in him, I assure you. He is said to 
be at the feet of Rachel just now, and a man may nearly 
as well be with a tigress in a cage. He began with the 
Princess Belgiojoso — followed George Sand — Rachel fin- 
ishes, is likely to finish in every sense. In the intervals 
he plays at chess. There's the anatomy of a man! 

•We are expecting' a visit from Lamartine, who does a 
great deal of honour to both of us, it appears, in the 
way of appreciation, and is kind enough to propose to 
come. I will tell you all about it. 

But now tell me. Oh, I want so to hear how you are. 
Better, stronger, I hope and trust. How does the new 
house and garden look in the spring? Prettier and pret- 
tier, I dare say. . . . 

. The dotation of the President is enormous certainly, 
and I wish for his own sake it had been rather more 



406 EDWARD LEAR [^t. 35 

moderate. Now I must end here. Post hour strikes. 
God bless you. 

Do love me as much as you can, always, and think how 
I am your ever affectionate 



Our darling is well ; thank God. 



Ba. 



[^t.35] EDWARD LEAR 

1812-1888 
To Chichester Fortescue 

[life in ROME] 

107 2do Via Eelici, Roma, 

Feby. 12, 1848. 
Your letter of Oct. 25th 1847, ought to have been an- 
swered before now, & I have been going to do so ever 
since I had it, but I have said to myself "what's the use 
of writing to-day when you haven't 20 minutes — or to-day 
when you've got the toothache, or to-day when you are 
so cross? Fortescue won't thank you for a stupid letter, 
particularly as his was so very amusing, so you'd better 
wait you had. And so I have till I'm ashamed of the 
delay and therefore I'll send off note 18th be the letter 
of what degree of badness it may. First glancing over 
your bi-sheeted epistle — thank you for your introduction 
to Baring: he is an extremely luminous & amiable brick, 
and I like him very much, & I suppose he likes me or he 
wouldn't take the trouble of knocking me up as he does, 
considering the lot of people he might take to instead. 
We have been out once or twice in the Campagna, and 
go to Mrs. Sartoris, or other evening popular approxima- 
tions together. He would draw; very well, and indeed 
does, but has little practice. Altogether he is one of the 
best specimens of young English here this winter, tho' 
there is a tolerably good sprinkling of elect & rational 
beings too. In fact it is a propitious season, the rumours 
of distraction prevented a many nasty vulgar people from 
coming, and there is really room to move. Among fam- 
ilies, Greys, Herberts, Olives stand promiscuous ; of young 
ladies, Miss W. Horton, & Miss Lindsay are first to my 



^t. 35] EDWARD LEAR 407 

taste, & of married ones, Mrs. G. Herbert & Mrs. Olive, — 
then Lady W. is admired though by me not: she is so 
like a wren, I'm sure she must turn into a wren when 
she dies. The variety of foreign society is delightful, 
particularly with long names: e.g., Madame Pul-itz-neck- 
off — and Count Bigenouff; — Baron Polysuky, & Mons. 
Pig: — I never heard such a list. I am afraid to stand 
near a door, lest the announced names should make me 
grin. — Then there is a Lady Mary Ross, and a most gigan- 
tic daughter — whom Italians wittily call "the great Ross- 
child," and her mama, "Rosso-antico." ... I miss th(< 
Gordon's and my old kind friend Lady S. Percy sadly, (S{ 
somehow the 6 & 30-ness of my sentiments and constitu- 
tion make me rather graver than of old: — also, the un- 
certainty of matters here and everywhere, and my own 
unfixedness of plans, conspire to make me more unstable 
& ass-like than usual. . . . 

And now regarding yourself, I heard all about your 
Greek tour with interest, and that you were returned to 
England and for Louth, as you will have found by a dis- 
gusting little letter I sent you at the end of last October. 
The most important part of your letter seems to me that 
which gives me news of your being so rich a man: — I 
can only say I am sincerely glad of it, and I don't flatter 
you when I say I believe you will make as good a use of 
your money as anybody. I long to know how you like 
your new parliamentary life: — (Do you know a friend 
of mine, Bonham Carter M.P. for Winchester? This 
reminds me of "Have you been in India?" "Yes." "O 
then do you know my friend Mr. Jones?") So pray let 
me hear from you. ... 

Now I am at the end of replying to your letter, and a 
very jolly one it is. So I must e'en turn over another 
stone as the sandpiper said when he was alooking for 
vermicules. You ask what I am about; making of little 
paintings, one for Ld. Canning etc. etc., and one of a 
bigger growth for Ld. Ward, but I am in a disturbidous 
state along of my being undecided as to how I shall go 
on with art, knowing that figure drawing is that which I 
know least of & yet is the "crown and roof of things." 
I have a plan of going to Bowen at Corfu and thence 
Archipelago or Greeceward, (Greece however is in a very 



408 EDWAKD LEAR [^t. 54 

untravellable state just now) should the state of Italy pre- 
vent my remaining in it for the summer. But whether I 
stop here to draw figure, or whether I go to Apulia & 
Calabria, or whether I Archipelago (V. A. Archipelago, 
P. Archipelawent, P. P. Archipelagone) or whatever I 
do, I strongly long to go to Egypt for the next winter 
as ever is, if so be as I can find a sufficiency of tin to 
allow of my passing 4 or 5 months there. I am quite 
crazy about Memphis & On & Isis & crocodiles and oph- 
thalmia & Nubians, and simooms & Sorcerers, & Sphin- 
gidoe. Seriously the contemplation of Egypt must fill the 
mind, the artistic mind I mean, with great food for the 
rumination of long years. I have a strong wish also to 
see Syria, & Asia Minor and all sorts of grisogorious 
places, but, but, who can tell? You see therefore in how 
noxious a state of knownothingatallaboutwhatoneisgoing- 
todo-ness I am in. Yet this is clear : — the days of possible 
Lotus-eating are diminishing, & by the time I am 40 I 
would fain be in England once more. ... 

But a truce to growling and reflections. I should have 
told you that Bowen has written to me in the kindest 
possible manner, asking me to go and stay with him at 
Corfii and I shall regret if I can't do so. I wish to 
goodness I was a polype and could cut myself in s.ix bits. 
I wish you were downstairs in that little room. 



[^t. 54] 

To Lady Waldegrave 
["there is xo such a person"] 

15, Stratford Place, Oxford St., W. 

17 October, 1866. 
My dear Lady Waldegrave, — 

It is orfle cold here, and I don't know what to do. I 
think I shall go to Jibberolter, passing through Spain, 
and doing Portigle later. After all one isn't a potato — 
to remain always in one place. 

A few days ago in a railway as I went to my sister's 
a gentleman explained to two ladies, (whose children had 
my "Book of Nonsense,") that thousands of families were 
grateful to the author (which in silence I agreed to) 



^t. 41] JOHN LOTHEOP MOTLEY 409 

who was not generally known — but was really Lord Derby : 
"and now came a showing forth, which cleared up at once 
to my mind why that statement has already appeared in 
several papers. Edward Earl of Derby (said the Gen- 
tleman) did not choose to publish the book openly, but 
dedicated it as you see to his relations, and now if you 
will transpose the letters LEAR you will read simply 
EDWARD EARL. — Says I, joining spontanious in the 
conversation — "That is quite a mistake: I have reason 
to know that Edward Lear the painter and author wrote 
and illustrated the whole book." "And I," says the Gen- 
tleman, says he — "have good reason to know, Sir, that you 
are wholly mistaken. There is 7io such a person as Ed- 
M'ard Lear." "But," says I, "there is — and I am the man 
— and I wrote the book!" Whereon all the party burst 
out laughing and evidently thought me mad or telling 
fibs. So I took off my hat and showed it all round,, 
with Edward Lear and the address in large letters — also 
one' of my cards, and a marked handkerchief: on which 
amazement devoured those benighted individuals and I 
left them to gnash their teeth in trouble and tumult. 
Believe me. Dear Lady Waldegrave, 

Yours sincerely, 
Edward Lear. 



[^t.41] JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 

1814-1S77 
To HIS Wife 

[an inn at DOVER] 

Long's Hotel, 
Thursday morning, October 18th, 1855. 
My dearest Mary, — 

I write these few lines merely to tell you that I arrived 
sain et sauf in London yesterday forenoon at half-past 
ten. I crossed the Channel at three. The weather was 
very good, and the sea very smooth. The ladies on board 
were all desperately sea-sick, much to my astonishment, 
such demonstrations being entirely unauthorised by any 
of the circumstances. I stopped at Dover for the night, 



410 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY [iEt. 41 

finding it very ridiculous to hurry up to London at mid- 
night, as everybody in that metropolis was likely to get 
on very well without me till the following morning. The 
inn, the "Lord Warden Hotel," is one of the best in 
England. My washing-stand in itself was enough to in- 
spire one with veneration for the whole British nation; 
two great water jugs as big as those in the "Marriage of 
Cana," by Paolo Veronese, a wash basin big enough to 
swim in, celestial slop jars, heaps of clean towels, etc., 
and more water than was ever seen in one place in Paris, 
except in the Ecoles de Natation, all made one feel very 
comfortable. A Frenchman would have been wretched, 
however, for there were not two clocks or even four mir- 
rors in the chamber, but I solaced myself with the remem- 
brance of the splendour I had left in Paris, and with the 
potentiality of being clean a few brief days in England. 
I am sorry, however, to say that I am not as well off 
here. I have a good enough bachelor chamber, but it 
looks like a hospital for invalided or incurable furniture. 
The bed is as wide as Oxford Street; it is also quite as 
hard, the mattresses being evidently stuffed with paving 
stones from that classic and stony-hearted step-mother.* 
I stopped at Chapman's on my way up from the railroad, 
so commenced business sooner than if I had not slept at 
Dover, filled up- the form of application for the copyright, 
and in short did all that was necessary before coming to 
Long's. We have decided of course to defer actual pub- 
licationf till the other (American edition) is ready. . . . 

Ever your own 

J. L. M. 

* "Oxford street, stony-hearted stepmother" — De Quincey's Confes- 
sions of an English Opium-Eater. 
iThe Rise of the Dutch Republic. 



.Et. 44] JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 411 

[^t. 44] 

To HIS Wife 

[thackeray at forty-six] 

London, 
May 28th, 1858. 
My dearest Mary, — 

... In the evening I dined at Mackintosh's. The 

party consisted of the Sturgis's, a -Mrs. , of whom 

I know nothing, except that Thackeray kept saying, as 
I learned afterwards, all dinner-time to Sturgis, "I hate 
that woman !" — why she was so odious I have not yet 
been informed, as she seemed as harmless as a dove if 
not as wise as a serpent. The others were Thackeray, 
Lord Carlisle, and myself. I believe you have never 
seen Thackeray. He has the appearance of a colossal in- 
fant, smooth, white, shiny ringlety hair, flaxen, alas, with 
advancing years, a roundish face, with- a little dab of a 
nose upon which it is a perpetual wonder how he keeps 
his spectacles, a sweet but rather piping voice, with some- 
thing of the childish treble about it, and a very tall, 
slightly stooping figure— such are the characteristics of 
the great "snob" of England. His manner is like that 
of everybody else in England — nothing original, all 
planed down into perfect uniformity with that of his fel- 
low-creatures. There was not much more distinction in 
his talk than in his white choker or black coat and waist- 
coat. As you like detail, however, I shall endeavour to 
Boswellise him a little, but- it is very hard work. Some- 
thing was said of Carlyle the author. Thackeray said, 
"Carlyle hates everybody that has arrived — if they are on 
the road, he may perhaps treat them civilly." Mackin- 
tosh praised the description in the "French- Revolution" 
of the flight of the King and Queen (which is certainly 
one of the most living pictures ever painted with ink), 
and Thackeray agreed with him, and spoke of the pas- 
sages very heartily. Of the Cosmopolitan Club, Thack- 
eray said, "Everybody is or is supposed to be a celebrity; 
nobody ever says anything worth hearing and every one 
goes there with his white choker at midnight, to appear 
as if he had just been dining with the aristocracy. I 
have no doubt," he added, "that half of us put on the 



412 JOHN LOTHROP MORLEY [.Et. 44 

white cravat after a solitary dinner at home or at our 
club, and so go down among the Cosmopolitans." . . . 

Your affectionate 
J. L. M. 
[.Et. 44] 

To HIS WlJE 

[dining with macaulay at the mackintoshes'] 

London, 
May 30th, 1858. 
My dearest Mary, — 

On Monday I dined with the Mackintoshes. Macaulay, 
Dean Milman, and Mr. and Mrs. Farrar composed the 
party. Of course you would like a photograph of Ma- 
caulay, as faithfully as I can give it. He impressed me 
on the whole agreeably. To me, personally, he spoke 
courteously, respectfully, showed by allusion to the sub- 
ject in various ways that he was quite aware of my book 
and its subject, although I doubt whether he had read 
it. He may have done so, but he manifested no special 
interest in me. I believe that he is troubled about his 
health* (having a kind of bronchial or asthmatic cough), 
and that he rarely dines out now-a-days, so that it is 
perhaps a good deal of a compliment that he came on this 
occasion on purpose to meet me. His general appearance 
is singularly commonplace. I cannot describe him bet- 
ter than by saying he has exactly that kind of face and 
figure which by no possibility would be selected, out of 
even a very small number of persons, as those of a re- 
markable personage. He is of the middle height, neither 
above nor below it. The outline of his face in profile is 
rather good. The nose, very slightly aquiline, is well 
cut, and the expression of the mouth and chin agreeable. 
His hair is thin and silvery, and he looks a good deal 
older than many men of his years — for, if I am not mis- 
taken, he is just as old as his century, like Cromwell, 
Balzac, Charles V,, and other notorious individuals. Now 
those two impostors, so far as appearances go, Prescott 
and Mignet, who are sixty-two, look young enough, in 
comparison, to be Macaulay's sons. The face, to resume 
my description, seen in front, is blank, and as it were 

* Macaulay died in December of the next year. 



.^t. 44] JOHN LOTHKOP MOELEY 413 

badly lighted. There is nothing luminous in the eye, 
nothing impressive in the brow. The forehead is spa- 
cious, but it is scooped entirely away in the region where 
benevolence ought to be, while beyond rise reverence, 
firmAess and self-esteem, like Alps on Alps. The under 
eyelids are so swollen as almost to close the eyes, and it 
would be quite impossible to tell the colour of those orbs, 
and equally so, from the neutral tint of his hair and 
face, to say of what complexion he had originally been. 
His voice is agreeable, and its intonations delightful, al- 
though that is so common a gift with Englishmen as to 
be almost a national characteristic. 

As usual, he took up the ribands of the conversation, 
and kept them in his own hand, driving wherever it 
suited him. I believe he is thought by many people a 
bore, and you remember that Sydney Smith spoke of 
him as "our Tom, the greatest engine of social oppres- 
sion in England." I should think he might be to those 
who wanted to talk also. I can imagine no better fun 
than to have Carlyle and himself meet accidentally at 
the same dinner-table with a small company. It would 
be like two locomotives, each with a long train, coming 
against each other at express speed. Both, I have no 
doubt, could be smashed into silence at the first collision. 
Macaulay, however, is not so dogmatic, or so outrage- 
ously absurd as Carlyle often is, neither is he half so 
grotesque or amusing. His whole manner has the smooth- 
ness and polished surface of the man of the world, the 
politician, and the new peer, spread over the man of 
letters within. I do not know that I can repeat any of 
his conversation, for there was nothing to excite very 
particular attention in its even flow. There was not a 
touch of Holmes's ever bubbling wit, imagination, en- 
thusiasm, and arabesqueness. It is the perfection of the 
commonplace, without sparkle or flash, but at the same 
time always interesting and agreeable. I could listen to 
him with pleasure for an hour or two every day, and I 
have no doubt I should thence grow wiser every day, for 
his brain is full, as hardly any man's ever was, and his 
way of delivering himself is easy and fluent. . . . 

Yours most affectionately, 
• J. L. M. 



[.Et. 23] CHARLOTTE BRONTE 

1816-1855 

To Ellen Nussey 

[a curate proposes] 

August 4th, 1839. 
My dearest Ellen, — 

The Liverpool journey is yet a matter of talk, a sort 
of castle in the air; but, between you and me, I fancy 
it is very doubtful whether it will ever assume a more 
solid shape. Aunt, like many other elderly people, likes 
to talk of such things; but when it comes to putting 
them into practice, she rather falls oif. Such being the 
case, I think you and I had better adhere to our first 
plan of going somewhere together, independently of 
other people. I have got leave to accompany you for a 
week, — at the utmost stretch a fortnight. Where do you 
wish to go? Burlington, I should think from what Mary 
Taylor says, would be as eligible a place as any. When 
do you wish to set off? Arrange all these things accord- 
ing to your own convenience; I shall start no objections. 
The idea of seeing the sea — of being near it — watching 
its changes by sunrise, sunset, moonlight, and noonday — • 
in calm, perhaps in storm — fills and satisfies my mind. 
I shall be discontented at nothing. And then I am not 
to be with a set of people with whom I have nothing in 
common, — who would be nuisances and bores; but with 
you, Ellen Nussey, whom I like, and who know and like 
me. I have an odd circumstance to relate to you — pre- 
pare for a hearty laugh! The other day Mr. Hodgson, 
papa's former curate, now a vicar, came over to spend 
the day with us, bringing with him his own curate. The 
latter gentleman, by name, Mr. Bryce, is a young Irish 
clergyman, fresh from Dublin University. It was the 
first time we had any of us seen him, but however, after 
the manner of his countrymen, he soon made himself at 
home. His character quickly appeared in his conversa- 
tion: witty, lively, ardent, clever too, but deficient in the 
dignity and discretion of an Englishman. At home, you 
know, Ellen, I talk with ease, and am never shy, never 
weighed down and oppressed by that miserable mauvaise 
lionte which torments and constrains me elsewhere. So 

414 



^t. 32] CHARLOTTE BRONTE 415 

I conversed with this Irishman and laughed at his jests, 
and though I saw faults in his character, excused them 
because of the amusement his originality afforded. I 
cooled a little, indeed, and drew in towards the latter 
part of the evening, because he began to season his con- 
versation with something of Hibernian flattery, which I 
did not quite relish. However, they went away, and no 
more was thought about them. A few days after I got 
a letter, the direction of which puzzled me, it being in a 
hand I was not accustomed to see. Evidently, it was 
neither from you nor Mary Taylor, my only correspond- 
ents. Having opened and read it. It proved to be a decla- 
ration of attachment and proposal of matrimony, ex- 
pressed in the ardent language of the sapient young 
Irishman! Well! thought I, I have heard of love at first 
sight, but this beats all. I leave you to guess what my 
answer would be, convinced that you will not do me the 
injustice of guessing wrong. When we meet I'll show 
you the letter. I hope you are laughing heartily. This 
is not like one of my adventures, is it? It more resem- 
bles Martha Taylor's. I am certainly doomed to be an 
old maid. Never mind, I made up my mind to that fate 
ever since I was twelve years old. Write soon. 

C. Bronte. 



[.Et. 32] 



To Ellen Nussey 
[dark days] 



October 9th, '48. 
My dear Ellen, — 

I should have written to yon ere now had I been sure 
of your address, but I thought by this you had proba- 
bly left Rye, as you talked of being in London soon. 
The past three weeks have been a dark interval in our 
humble home. Branwell's constitution has been failing 
fast all the summer; but still, neithe- the doctors nor 
himself thought him so near his end as he was. He was 
entirely confined to his bed for but one single day, and 
was in the village two days before his death. He died, 
after twenty minutes' struggle, on Sunday morning, Sep- 
tember 24th. He was perfectly conscious till the last 
agony came on. His mind had undergone the peculiar 



416 CHARLOTTE BRONTE [.Et. 32 

change which frequently precedes death, two days previ- 
ously; the calm of better feelings filled it; a return of 
natural affection marked his last moments. He is in 
God's hands now; and the All-powerful is likewise the 
All-merciful. A deep conviction that he rests at last — 
rests well after his brief, erring, suffering, feverish life, 
fills and quiets my mind now. The final separation, the 
spectacle of his pale corpse, gave more acute, bitter pain 
than I could have imagined. Till the last hour comes, 
we never know how much we can forgive, pity, regret a 
near relation. All his vices were and are nothing now. 
We remember only his woes. Papa was acutely dis- 
tressed at first, but, on the whole, has borne the event 
well. Emily and Anne are pretty well, though Anne is 
always delicate, and Emily has a cold and cough at 
present. It was my fate to sink at the crisis, when I 
should have collected my strength. Headache and sick- 
ness came on first on the Sunday; I could not regain 
my appetite. Then internal pain attacked me. I became 
at once much reduced. It was impossible to eat a morsel. 
At last, bilious fever declared itself. I was confined to 
bed a week — a dreary week, but, thank God ! health 
seems now returning. I can sit up all day, and take 
moderate nourishment. The doctor said at first I should 
be very slow in recovering, but I seem to get on faster 
than he anticipated. I am ordered to be scrupulously 
careful about diet, etc., and I try to be obedient to di- 
rections. 

I shall be very glad to hear from you again, dear Ellen ; 
it is true enough that your letters interest me; there is 
no mistake there. I feel that I do not write to you 
enough in detail, but I cannot help it; forgive me that 
shortcoming as you have forgiven me many others. 

Yours faithfully, 
C. Bronte. 

P.S. — You are to understand that my bilious fever is 
quite gone now and that I am truly much better. 



.Et. 35] CHARLOTTE BRONTE 417 

[^Et. 35] 

To George Smith 
["henry Esmond"; Thackeray's "cruel knife"] 

February 14th, 1852. 
My dear Sir, — 

It has been a great delight to me to read Mr. Thack- 
eray's work; and I now so seldom express my sense of 
kindness that, for once, you must permit me, without 
rebuke, to thank you for a pleasure so rare and special. 
Yet I am not going to praise either Mr. Thackeray or 
his book. I have read, enjoyed, been interested, and, 
after all, feel full as much ire and sorrow as gratitude 
and admiration. And still one can never lay down a 
book of his without the last two feelings having their 
part, be the subject of treatment what it may. In the 
first half of the book what chiefly struck me was the 
wonderful manner in which the writer throws himself 
into the spirit and letters of the times of which he treats; 
the allusions, the illustrations, the style, all seem to me 
so masterly in their exact keeping, their harmonious con- 
sistency, their nice, natural truth, their pure exemption 
from exaggeration. No second-rate imitator can write 
in that way; no coarse scene-painter can charm us with 
an allusion so delicate and perfect. But what bitter 
satire, what relentless dissection of diseased subjects! 
Well, and this, too, is right, or would be right, if the 
savage surgeon did not seem so fiercely pleased with his 
work. Thackeray likes to dissect an ulcer or an aneu- 
rism; he has pleasure in putting his cruel knife or probe 
into quivering living flesh. Thackeray would not like 
all the world to be good; no great satirist would like so- 
ciety to be perfect. 

As usual, he is unjust to women, quite unjust. There 
is hardly any punishment he does not deserve for making 
Lady Castlewood peep through a keyhole, listen at a door, 
and be jealous of a boy and a milkmaid. Many other 
things I noticed that, for my part, grieved and exas- 
perated me as I read ; but then, again, came passages so 
true, so deeply thought, so tenderly felt, one could not 
help forgiving and admiring. . . . 

But I wish he could be told not to care much for dwell- 



418 HENRY DAVID THOREAU [^t. 25 

ing on the political or religious intrigues of the times. 
Thackeray, in his heart, does not value political or re- 
ligious intrigues of any age or date. He likes to show 
us human nature at home, as he himself daily sees it; 
his wonderful observant faculty likes to be in action. In 
him this faculty is a sort of captain and leader; and if 
ever any passage in his writings lacks interest, it is when 
this master-faculty is for a time thrust into a subordi- 
nate position. I think such is the case in the former half 
of the present volume. Towards the middle he throws 
oif restraint, becomes himself, and is strong to the close. 
Everything now depends on the second and third vol- 
umes. If, in pith and interest, they fall short of the 
first, a true success cannot ensue. If the continuation be 
an improvement upon the commencement, if the stream 
gathers force as it rolls, Thackeray will triumph. Some 
people have been in the habit of terming him the second 
writer of the day; it just depends on himself whether or 
not these critics shall be justified in their award. He 
need not be the second. God made him second to no 
man. If I were he, I would show myself as I am, not as 
critics report me; at any rate I would do my best. Mr. 
Thackeray is easy and indolent, and seldom cares to do 
his best. Thank you once more; and believe me yours 
sincerely, 

C. Bronte. 



[^t. 25] HENRY DAVID THOREAU 

1817-1862 
To HIS Father and Mother 
["i DO not like their cities"] 
Castleton, Staten Island, May 11, 1843. 
Dear Mother and Friends at Home, — 

We arrived here safely at ten o'clock on Sunday morn- 
ing, having had as good passage as usual, though we ran 
aground and were detained a couple of hours in the 
Thames River, till the tide came to our relief. At length 
we curtseyed up to a wharf just the other side of their 
Castle Garden, — very incurious about them and their 
city. I believe my vacant looks, absolutely inaccessible 



.Et. 25] HENRY DAVID THOREAU 419 

to questions, did at length satisfy an army of starving 
cabmen that I did not want a hack, cab, or anything of 
that sort as yet. It was the only demand the city made 
on us; as if a wheeled vehicle of some sort were the sum 
and summit of a reasonable man's wants. "Having tried 
the water," they seemed to say, "will you not return to 
the pleasant securities of land carriage ? Else why your 
boat's prow turned toward the shore at last ?" They are 
a sad-looking set of fellows, not permitted to come on 
board, and I pitied them. They had been expecting me, 
it would seem, and did really wish that I should take a 
cab; though they did not seem rich enough to supply me 
with one. 

It was a confused jumble of heads and soiled coats, 
dangling from flesh-colored faces, — all swaying to and 
fro, as by a sort of undertow, while each whipstick, true 
as the needle to the pole, still preserved that level and 
direction in which its proprietor had dismissed his for- 
lorn interrogatory. They took sight from them, — the 
lash being wound up thereon, to prevent your attention 
from wandering, or to make it concentre upon its object 
by the spiral line. They began at first, perhaps, with 
the modest, but rather confident inquiry, "Want a cab, 
sir?" but as their despair increased, it took the affirma- 
tive tone, as the disheartened and irresolute are apt to 
do: "You want a cab, sir," or even, "You want a nice 
cab, sir, to take you to Fourth Street." The question 
•which one had bravely and hopefully begun to put, an- 
other had the tact to take up and conclude with fresh 
emphasis, — twirling it from his particular whipstick as 
if it had emanated from his lips — as the sentiment did 
from his h-^art. Each one could truly say, "Them's my 
sentiments." But it was a sad sight. 

I am seven and a half miles from New York, and, as 
it would take half a day at least, have not been there yet. 
I have already run over no small part of the island, to the 
highest hill, and some way along the shore. From the 
hill directly behind the house I can see New York, 
Brooklyn, Long Island, the Narrows, through which ves- 
sels bound to and from all part? of the world chiefly pass, 
— Sandy Hook and the Highlands of Neversink (part of 
the coast of New Jersey) — and, by going still farther up 



420 HENKY DAVID THOKEAU [JEt. 33 

the hill, the Kill van Kull, and Newark Bay. From the 
pinnacle of one Madame Grimes' house, the other night 
at sunset, I could see almost round the island. Far in 
the horizon there was a fleet of sloops bound up the Hud- 
son, which seemed to be going over the edge of the earth ; 
and in view of these trading ships, commerce seems quite 
imposing. 

But it is rather derogatory that your dwelling-place 
should be only a neighborhood to a great city, — to live on 
an inclined plane. I do not like their cities and forts, 
with their morning and evening guns, and sails flapping 
in one's eye. I want a whole continent to breathe in, and 
a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street 
cannot buy, — nor Broadway with its wooden pavement. I 
must live along the beach, on the southern shore, which 
looks directly out to sea, — and see what that great parade 
of water means, that dashes and roars, and has not yet 
wet me, as long as I have lived. 

I must not know anything about my condition and re- 
lations here till what is not permanent is worn off. I 
have not yet subsided. Give me time enough, and I may 
like it. All my inner man heretofore has been a Concord 
impression; and here come these Sandy Hook and Coney 
Island breakers to meet and modify the former; but it 
will be long before I can make nature look as innocently 
grand and inspiring as in Concord. 

Your affectionate son, 

Henry D. Thoreau. 
[^t. 33] 

To Ralph Waldo Emerson 

[MARGARET FULLER's DEATH] 

Fire Island Beach, 
Thursday morning, July 25, 1850. 
Dear Friend, — 

I am writing this at the house of Smith Oakes, within 
one mile of the wreck.* He is the one who rendered most 
assistance. William H. Channing cam^ down with me, 
but I have not seen Arthur Fuller, nor Greeley, nor Mar- 
cus Spring. Spring and Charles Sumner were here yes- 

* Of the barque Elhaheth. 



^t. 33] HENEY DAVID THOREAU 421 

terday, but left soon. Mr. Oakes and wife tell me (all 
the survivors came, or were brought, directly to their 
house) that the ship struck at ten minutes after four 
A.M., and all hands, being mostly in their nightclothes, 
made haste to the forecastle, the water coming in at once. 
There they remained; the passengers in the forecastle, 
the crew above it, doing what they could. Every wave 
lifted the forecastle roof and washed over those within. 
The first man got ash'ore at nine; many from nine to 
noon. At flood tide, about half past three o'clock, when 
the ship broke up entirely, they came out of the fore- 
castle, and Margaret sat with her back to the foremast, 
with her hands on her knees, her husband and child al- 
ready drowned. A great wave came and washed her aft. 
The steward ( ?) had just before taken her child and 
started for shore. Both were drowned. 

The broken desk, in a bag, containing no very valuable 
papers; a large black leather trunk, with an upper and 
under compartment, the upper holding books and papers; 
a carpet-bag, probably Ossoli's, and one of his shoes ( ?) 
are all the Ossoli effects known to have been found. Four 
bodies remain to be found: the two Ossolis, Horace Sum- 
ner, and a sailor. I have visited the child's grave. Its 
body will probablj' be taken away to-day. The wreck is 
to be sold at auction, excepting the hull, to-day. 

The mortar would not go off. Mrs. Hasty, the cap- 
tain's wife, told Mrs. Oakes that she and Margaret di- 
vided their money, and tied up the halves in handker- 
chiefs around their persons; that Margaret took sixty or 
seventy dollars. Mrs. Hasty, who can tell all about Mar- 
garet up to eleven o'clock on Friday, is said to be going 
to Portland, iSTew England, to-day. She and Mrs. Fuller 
must, and probably will, come together. The cook, the 
last to leave, and the steward ( ?) will know the rest. I 
shall try to see them. In the mean while I shall do what 
I can to recover property and obtain particulars here- 
abouts. William H. Channing — did I write it? — has 
come with me. Arthur Fuller has this moment reached 
the house. He reached the beach last night. \Ye got 
here yesterday noon. A good part of the wreck still holds 
together where she struck, and something may come 
ashore with her fragments. The last body was found on 



422 JAMES T. FIELDS [^t. 46 

Tuesday, three miles west. Mrs. Oakes dried the papers 
which were in the trunk, and she says they appeared to 
be of various kinds. "Would they cover that table?" (a 
small round one). "They would if spread out. Some 
were tied up. There were twenty or thirty books in the 
same half of the trunk. Another smaller trunk, empty, 
came ashore, but there was no mark on it." She speaks 
of Paulina as if she might have been a sort of nurse to 
the child. I expect to go to Patchogue, whence the pil- 
ferers must have chiefly come, and advertise, etc. 



[^t. 46] JAMES T. FIELDS 

1817-1881 

To Henry W. Longfellow* 

["among the serenities"] 

Campton Village, 
June 19, 1864. 
My dear Longfellow, — 

We are here among the serenities and the fresh eggs. 
Would that you were near, to feel with us the wonderful 
beauty of the hills! Do come, and go over the Willy 
acres, and drive down into the comforting valleys by the 
lovely river, and eat wild strawberries, and rattle over 
the hills in our old wagon. In one M^eek of this life I 
have grown as rusty as an old nail. I have lost all care; 
and the bundles of business have dropped clean off my 
shoulders and gone into the Pemigewasset. All the 
hiizziness here u done by the bees; and the only active 
people are the birds, who sing all day long about our 
old dwelling by the roadside. Such a careless, g'ood-for- 
nothing peaceful old life as this is well worth trying. A 
great and glorious laziness creeps up and takes posses- 
sion of you the moment you arrive, and never lets go its 
hold as long as you stay. You loaf about in dell and 
hollow, and lie down on the hillside and let the slugs 
crawl over you without a shake. In the "broad orchards 
resonant with bees" you go to sleep, and only wake up 

* For Longfellow's answer, see p. 278. 



^t. 34] JOHN EUSKIN 423 

when the horn blows for dinner. We know nothing of 
the weather in these parts. 

''It may blow North, it still is warm, 
Or South, it still is clear; 
Or East, it smells like a clover farm, 
Or West, no thunder fear." 

Will you not come? ... 

I hope "Palingenesis" will be well launched when the 
July Atlantic is ready. I left directions to have it prop- 
erly put in the papers, but I have small faith in editors 
when I am out of the way. I am sure nothing finer has 
been printed for years. 

''Suns rise and set in Saadi's speech." 

My wife sends kindest regards and hopes you will make 
your way to our roadside perch in New Hampshire. 

Yours ever, 
J. T. F. 

[yEt. 34] JOHN EUSKIN 

1819-1900 
To Mary Eussell Mitford 
["wild storm-clouds"; the lake country and the alps] 

Keswick, Cumberland, 
Good Friday, 1853. 
My dear Miss Mitford, — 

The pain of deep self-reproach was mixed with the de- 
light which your letter gave me yesterday. Two months 
back I was each day on the point of writing to you to 
ask for your sympathy — the kindest and keenest sympa- 
thy that, I think, ever filled the breadth and depth of an 
unselfish heart. But my purpose was variously stayed, 
chiefly, as I remember, by the events on the Continent, 
fraught to me with very deep disappointment, and cast- 
ing me into a depression and fever of spirit which, joined 
with some other circumstances nearer home, have, until 
now that I am resting with my kind wife among these 
quiet hills, denied me the heart to write cheerfully to 
those very dear friends to whom I would fain never write 
sadly. And now your letter comes with all its sweetness 



424 JOHN RUSKIN [^:t. 34 

and all its sting. My very dear lady, believe me, I am 
deeply gratified for your goodness, in a state of wonder- 
ment at its continuance to me — cold and unthankful as 
I have seemed — and I earnestly hope that in future it 
may not so frequently have to take the form of forgive- 
ness, nor my sense of it that of remorse. 

Nor did I shrink more from the silent blame than from 
the painful news of your letter, though I conjecture that 
your escape, though narrow, was complete — you say noth- 
ing of any hurt received. I hate ponies and everything 
four-legged, except an ass-colt and an arm-chair. But 
you are better and the spring is come, and I hope, for I 
am sure you will allow me, to bring my young wife to be 
rejoiced (under the shadow of her new and grievous lot) 
by your kind comforting. But pray keep her out of your 
garden, or she will certainly lose her wits with pure de- 
light, or perhaps insist on staying with you and letting 
me find my way through the world by myself: a task 
which I should not now like to undertake. I should be 
very, very happy just now but for these wild storm- 
clouds bursting on my dear Italy and my fair France, 
my occupation gone, and all my earthly treasures (ex- 
cept the one I have just acquired and the everlasting 
Alps) perilled amidst the "tumult of the people," the 
"imagining of vain things." Ah, my dear Miss Mitford, 
see what your favorite "Berangers" and "Gerald Griffins" 
do! But these are thoughts as selfish as they are narrow. 
I begin to feel that all the work I have been doing, and 
all the loves I have been cherishing, are ineffective and 
frivolous; that these are not times for watching clouds 
or dreaming over quiet waters, that more serious work 
is to be done, and that the time for endurance has come 
rather than for meditation, and for hope rather than for 
happiness. Happy those whose hope, without this severe 
and tearful rending-away of all the props and stability 
of earthly enjoyments, has been fixed "where the wicked 
cease from troubling." Mine was not;' it was based on 
"those pillars of the earth" which are "astonished at His 
reproof." 

I have, however, passed this week very happily here. 
We have a good clergyman, Mr. Myers, and I am recov- 
ering trust and tranquillity, though I had been wiser to 



JEt. 34] JOHN RUSKIN • 425 

have come to your fair English pastures and flowering 
meadows, rather than to these moorlands, for they make 
me feel too painfully the splendor, not to be in any wise 
resembled or replaced, of those mighty scenes which I 
can reach no more — at least for a time. I am thinking, 
however, of a tour among our English abbeys — a feature 
which our country possesses of peculiar loveliness. As 
for our mountains or lakes, it is in vain that they are 
defended for their finish or their prettiness. The people 
who admire them after Switzerland do not understand 
Switzerland — even Wordsworth, does not. Our moun- 
tains are mere bogs and lumps of spongy moorland, and 
our lakes are little swampy fish-ponds. It is curious I 
can take more pleasure in the chalk downs of Sussex, 
which pretend to nothing, than in these would-be hills, 
and I believe I shall have more pleasure in your pretty 
lowland scenery and richly painted gardens than in all 
the pseudo-sublime of the barren Highlands, except Killie- 
crankie. I went and knelt beside the stone that marks 
the spot of Claver's death-wound and prayed for more 
such spirits — we need them now. 

My wife begs me to return her sincere thanks for your 
kind message, and to express to you the delight with 
which she looks forward to being presented to you — re- 
membering what I told her among some of my first plead- 
ings with her, that, whatever faults she might discover 
in her husband, he could at least promise her friends, 
whom she would have every cause to love and to honor. 
She needs them, but I think also deserves them. 

Ever, my dear Miss Mitford, believe me. 

Faithfully and affectionately yours, 

J. RUSKIX. 



[^t. 25] JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL 
1819-1891 
To C. F. Briggs 
["elmwood junior"; "dr. primrose"] 

Elmwood, Sept. 18, 1844. 
3Iy dear Friend, — 

... I have inherited from my father an intellectual 
temperament which would fain keep its hands soft. I 
feel the sorrows of my friends and their joys with as 
much intensity as human nature is capable of, but I too 
often remain satisfied with the feeling. Partly from 
constitutional indolence and partly from timidity, I sit 
in the corner with my heart full and let others speak and 
act. But, with God's help, I am resolved to conquer this. 
I am too ready to leave things undone, because I am 
never satisfied with my manner of doing them. . . . 

You speak of our marriage as one of "convenience," 
l)y which I suppose you mean that our means are such 
as to warrant us in being married at any time. This is 
not the case. My Pioneer^ debts will not be paid before 
January. . . . My father would have assisted me greatly, 
but he lost a great part of his own property a few years 
ago, and his income will hardly keep pace with his gen- 
erosity. You will be glad to hear, however, that he has 
offered, without any hint on my part, to build me a cot- 
tage on a piece of his land here, if it can be done for a 
thousand dollars or thereabout. I think that I can put 
up quite a comfortable little nest for that sum, with a 
spare chamber for you and your wife whenever you may 
be able to pay us "provincials" a visit. ... I have al- 
ready christened my new castle (though as yet an atmos- 
pheric one) "Elmwood Junior," much to the delight of 
my father, who is one of the men you would like to know. 
He is Dr. Primrose in the comparative degree, the very 
simplest and charmingest of sexagenarians, and not with- 
out a great deal of the truest magnanimity. Nothing de- 
lights him so much as any compliment paid to me, ex- 
cept the idea of building me a cottage. If you could see 
him criticising the strut or crow of one of my chanti- 

* A periodical which had failed. 

426 



^t. 26] JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL 427 

cleers with a child's enthusiasm, or reading a review of 
my poems which he does not think laudatory enough (at 
the same time professing himself a disciple of Pope and 
pretending that he can't understand more than a tithe 
of what I write), or pointing out the advantages of the 
site he has selected for planting the Colony from Elm- 
wood Senior, or talking of the efficacy of prayer, or prais- 
ing "the old Federal Party with Washington at its head," 
or speaking of Jefferson as harshly as his kind heart will 
let him speak of anybody — in short, if you had a more 
than Asmodeus-faculty and could take the roof off his 
heart, you would fall in love with him. He has had far 
more sorrow, too, than most men, and his wounds have 
been in his tenderest part . . . but nothing could shake 
my beloved and honored father's trust in God and his 
sincere piety. . . * 

Most affectionately your friend, 
J. R. L. 
[^t. 26] 

To C. F. Briggs 
[his daughter] 

Wednesday, Feb. 4, 1846. 
My dear Friend, — 

You must count this as two distinct letters, and give 
me credit accordingly. To tell the truth, I am very much 
taken up with the baby at present. It is true our en- 
larged means enable us to keep a maid, but I do not 
think Blanche safe in any one's arms but her mother's 
and mine, and Maria cannot bear the fatigue of "tend- 
ing" her a great deal. I belong to a class of philosophers 
(unhappily, I believe, a small one) who do not believe 
that children are born into the world to subject their 
mothers to a diaper despotism, and to be brought down 
to their fathers after dinner, as an additional digestive 
to the nuts and raisins, to be bundled up and hurried 
away at the least symptom of disaffection or disturbed' 
digestion. Unlike many philanthropists, I endeavor to 
put my principles into practice, and the result is that I 
find pretty steady employment and (to finish the quota- 
tions from the advertisements of serving-men's Elysian 
Fields) good wages. Blanche, already, with a perverted 



428 JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL [^t. 29 

taste, prefers her father to any one else, and considers 
me (as the antiquaries do whatever they can't explain in 
the old mythologies, whether it be male or female) as 
"the personification of the maternal principle." She is 
a very good child, however, and only cries enough to sat- 
isfy us, as the old Greek said, that we have begotten a 
mortal. The only portentous thing she ever does is to 
sneeze, and as it would be quite supererogatory in her to 
do this in order to procure a hearty "God bless you!" 
from all present, I incline to interpret it by Sir Thomas 
Browne's theory, w^ho, in his exposure of vulgar errors, 
after pulling to pieces the notion that there is anything 
ominous in it, proceeds to inform us 'that it is an eifort 
of nature to expel any humor that may lurk in the brain. 
If this be so, I should imagine, from Miss Fuller's at- 
tempts at facetiousness, which now and then give a mel- 
ancholy a'ir to the Tribune, that she must be an unparal- 
leled sternutator. . . . 



[^t. 29] 

To C. F. Briggs 
[his ''old garret"; "a fable for critics"] 

Elmwood, May 12, 1848. 
My dear Friend, — 

. . . Here I am in my garret. I slept here when I 
was a little curly-headed boy, and used to see visions be- 
tween me and the ceiling, and dream the so often re- 
curring dream of having th6 earth put into my hand like 
an orange. In it I used to be shut up without a lamp — 
my mother saying that none of her children should be 
afraid of the dark — to hide my head under the pillows, 
and then not be able to shut out the shapeless monsters 
that thronged around me, minted in my brain. It is a 
pleasant room, facing, from the position of the house, al- 
most equally towards the morning and the afternoon. In 
winter I can see the sunset, in summer I can see it only 
as it lights up the tall trunks of the English elms in 
front of the house, making them sometimes, when the sky 
behind them is lead-colored, seem of the most brilliant 
yellow. When the sun, towards setting, breaks out sud- 



^t. 29] JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 429 

denly after a thunder-shower and I see them against an 
ahnost black sky, they have seemed of a most peculiar 
and dazzling green tint, like the rust on copper. In win- 
ter my view is a wide one, taking in a part of Boston. I 
can see one long curve of the Charles, and the wide fields 
between me and Cambridge, and the flat marshes beyond 
the river, smooth and silent with glittering snow. As the 
spring advances and one after another of our trees puts 
forth, the landscape is cut olf from me piece by piece, 
till, by the end of May, I am closeted in a cool and 
rustling privacy of leaves. Then I begin to bud with the 
season. Towards the close of winter I become thoroughly 
wearied of closed windows and fires. I feel dammed up, 
and yet there is not flow enough in me to gather any 
head of water. When I can sit at my open window and 
my friendly leaves hold their hands before my eyes to 
prevent their wandering to the landscape, I can sit down 
and write. 

I have begun upon the "Fable" again fairly, and am 
making some headway. I think with what I sent you 
(which I believe was about 500 lines) it will make some- 
thing over a thousand. I have done, since I sent the 
first half, Willis, Longfellow, Bryant, Miss Fuller, and 
Mrs. Child. In Longfellow's case I have attempted no 
characterization. The same (in a degree) may be said 
of S. M. F. With her I have been perfectly good-humored, 
but I have a fancy that what I say will stick uncom- 
fortably. It will make you laugh. So will L. M. C. 
After S. M. F. I make a short digression on bores in 
general, which has some drollery in it. Willis I think 
good. Bryant is funny, and as fair as I could make it, 
immitigably just. Indeed I have endeavored to be so in 
alL I am glad I did Bryant before I got your letter. 
The only verses I shall add regarding him are some 
complimentary ones, which I left for a happier mood 
after I had written the comic part. I steal from him in- 
deed ! If he knew me he would not say so. When I 
steal I shall go to a specie-vault, not to a till. Does he 
think that he invented the Past and has a prescription 
title to it? Do not think I am provoked. I am simply 
amused. If he had riled me, I might have knocked him 
into a cocked hat in my satire. But that, on second 



430 JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL [zEt. 30 

thought, would be no revenge, for it might make him 
President, a cocked hat being now the chief qualifica- 
tion. It would be more severe to knock him into the mid- 
dle of next week, as that is in the future, and he has such 
a partiality towards the past. However, enough of him. 
My next volume will be enough revenge, for it will be 
better than my last. . . . 



[^t. 30] 

To Charles E. Lowell* 
["the importance of 'observing' "] 

Elmwood, June 11, 1849. 
My dear Charlie, — 

I have had so much to do in the way of writing during 
the past week that I have not had time sooner to answer 
your letter, which came to me in due course of mail, and 
for which I am much obliged to you. 

I am very glad to hear that you are enjoying yourself 
so much, and also that the poor musquash dug faster 
than you did. I was not so long ago a boy as not to re- 
member what sincere satisfaction there is in a good duck- 
ing, and how the spirit of maritime adventure is min- 
istered to by a raft which will not float. I congratulate 
you on both experiences. 

And now let me assume the privilege of my uncleship 
to give you a little advice. Let me counsel you to' make 
use of all your visits to the country as opportunities for 
an education which is of great importance, which town- 
bred boys are commonly lacking in, and which can never 
be so cheaply acquired as in boyhood. Eemember that a 
man is valuable in our day for what he knows, and that 
his company will always be desired by others in exact 
proportion to the amount of intelligence and instruction 
he brings with him. I assure you that one of the earliest 
pieces of definite knowledge we acquire after we become 
men is this — that our company will be desired no longer 
than we honestly pay our proper share in the general 
reckoning of mutual entertainment. A man who knows 
more than another knows incalculably more, be sure of 

* At the age of fourteen. Killed at the Battle of Cedar Creek, 1864. 



JEt. 30] JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL 431 

that, and a person with eyes in his head cannot look even 
into a pigsty without learning something that will be 
useful to him at one time or another. Not that we should 
educate ourselves for the mere selfish sake of that ad- 
vantage of superiority which it will give us. But knowl- 
edge is power in this noblest sense, that it enables us to 
benefit others and to pay our way honorably in life by 
being of use. 

Now, when you are at school in Boston you are fur- 
nishing your brain with what can be obtained from books. 
You are training and enriching your intellect. While 
you are in the country you should remember that you 
are in the great school of the senses. Train your eyes 
and ears. Learn to know all the trees by their bark and 
leaves, by their general shape and manner of growth. 
Sometimes you can be able to say positively what a tree 
is not by simply examining the lichens on the bark, for 
you will find that particular varieties of lichen love par- 
ticular trees. Learn also to know all the birds by sight, 
by their notes, by their manner of flying; all the animals 
by their general appearance and gait or the localities 
they frequent. 

You would be ashamed not to know the name and use 
of every piece of furniture in the house, and we ought to 
be as familiar with every object in the world — which is 
only a larger kind of house. You recollect the pretty 
story of Pizarro and the Peruvian Inca : how the Inca 
asked one of the Spaniards to write the word Dio (God) 
upon his thumb-nail, and then, showing it to the rest, 
found only Pizarro unable to read it ! Well, you will 
find as you grow older that this same name of God is 
written all over the world in little phenomena that occur 
under our eyes every moment, and I confess that I feel 
very much inclined to hang my head with Pizarro when 
I cannot translate these hieroglyphics into my own ver- 
nacular. 

Now, I write all this to you, my dear Charlie, not in 
the least because it is considered proper for uncles to 
bore their nephews with musty moralities and advice ; 
but I should be quite willing that you should think me 
a bore, if I could only be the means of impressing upon 
you the importance of observing, and the great fact that 



432 JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL [.Et. 30 

we cannot properly observe till we have learned how. 
Education, practice, and especially a determination not 
to be satisfied with remarking that side of an object which 
happens to catch our eye first when we first see it — these 
gradually make an observer. The faculty, once acquired, 
becomes at length another sense which works mechani- 
cally. 

I think I have sometimes noticed in you an impatience 
of mind which you should guard against carefully. Pin 
this maxim up in your memory — that Nature abhors the 
credit system, and that we never get anything in life 
till we have paid for it. Anything good, I mean; evil 
things we always pay for afterwards, and always when 
we find it hardest to do it. By paying for them, of course, 
I mean laboring for them. Tell me how much good solid 
worh a young man has in him, and I will erect a horo- 
scope for him as accurate as Guy Mannering's for young 
Bertram. Talents are absolutely nothing to a man ex- 
cept he have the faculty of work along with them. They, 
in fact, turn upon him and worry him, as Actseon's dogs 
did — these are the sails and the rudder even of genius, 
without which it is only a wretched hulk upon the waters. 

It is not fair to look a gift horse in the mouth, unless, 
indeed, it be a wooden horse, like that which carried the 
Greeks into Troy; but my lecture on patience and finish 
was apropos of your letter, which was more careless in 
its chirography and (here and there) in its composition 
than I liked. Always make a thing as good as you can. 
Otherwise it was an excellent letter, because it told what 
you had seen and what you were doing — certainly better 
as a letter than this of mine, which is rather a sermon. 
But read it, my dear Charlie, as the advice of one who 
takes a sincere interest in you. I hope to hear from you 
again, and my answer to your next shall be more enter- 
taining. 

I remain your loving uncle, 
J. K. Lowell. 



^t. 33] JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 433 

[^t. 33] 

To Mrs. Francis G. Shaw 
[letters; the souls of houses] 

Elmwood, Jan. 11, 1853. 
My dear Sarah, — 

You know that I promised solemnly to write you a 
letter from Switzerland, and therefore, of course, I didn't 
do it. These epistolary promises to pay always do (or at 
least always ought to) come back protested. A letter 
ought always to be the genuine and natural flower of 
one's disposition — proper both to the writer and the sea- 
son — and none of your turnip japonicas cut laboriously 
out of a cheap and flabby material. Then, when you 
have sealed it up, it comes out fresh and fragrant. I do 
not like shuttle-cock correspondences. What is the use 
of our loving people if they can't let us owe them a let- 
ter ? if they can't be sure we keep on loving them if we 
don't keep sending an acknowledgment under our hands 
and seals once a month? As if there were a statute of 
limitations for affection! The moment Love begins to 
think of Duty, he may as well go hang himself with his 
own bow-string. All this means that if I should never 
write you another letter (which is extremely likely), and 
we should never meet again till I drop in upon you some 
day in another planet, I shall give an anxious look at 
myself in the mirror (while I am waiting for you to 
come down), and shall hear the flutter of your descend- 
ing wings with the same admiring expectation as I should 
now listen for your foot upon the stairs. . . . 

]^ow, the reason I am writing to you is this: I spent 
Sunday with Edmund Quincey at Dedham, and, as I 
came back over the rail yesterday, I was roused from a 
reverie by seeing "West Eoxbury Station" written up 
over the door of a kind of Italian villa at which we 
stopped. I almost twisted my head off looking for the 
house on the hill. There it stood in mourning still, just 
as Frank painted it. The color suited my mood exactly. 
The eyes of the house were shut, the welcoming look it 
had was gone; it was dead. I am a Platonisf about' 
houses. They get to my eye a shape from the souls that 
inhabit them. My friends' dwellings seem as peculiar to 



434 JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL [.Et. 33 

them as their bodies, looks, and motions. People have 
no right to sell their dead houses; they should burn them 
as they used to burn corpses. Suppose these bodies of 
ours could be reinhabited, and that our heirs could turn 
an honest penny (as American heirs certainly would) by 
disposing of them by auction. How could we endure to 
see Miss Amelia Augusta Smith's little soul giggling 
out of those sacred caves where we had been wont to 
catch glimpses of the shrinking Egeria of refined and 
noble womanhood? With what horror should we hear 
the voice that had thrilled us with song, startled us with 
ambushes of wit, or softened us with a sympathy that 
made us feel somehow as if our mother's tears were mixed 
with its tones — I say, with what horror should we hear 
it using all its pathos and all its melodious changes for 
the cheapening of a tarlatan muslin or the describing the 
dress that Eliza Ann wore at her wedding! I was too 
far off, thank God, to see Mrs. Smith looking out of your 
dead house's windows, but I mused of these things as the 
train rolled on, and caught fragments of the vapid talk 
of a couple on the seat before me. I have buried that 
house now and flung, my pious handful of earth over it 
and set up a head-stone — and I shall never look up to 
the hill-top again, let me pass it never so often. But I 
resolved to write a letter to its departed spirit. 

. . . It is hard writing at such a distance. If one 
be in good spirits, and write a nice, pleasant, silly letter, 
it may find those to whom it goes on the other side of 
the world in the midst of a new sorrow, and will be as 
welcome as a half -tipsy wedding guest at a funeral. The 
thing which everybody here is talking about is the Tip- 
pers. The Rappers are considered quite sloiu nowadays. 
Tables speak as inspired, consolatory nothings are liter- 
ally delivered ex cathedra. Bores whom we thought 
buried out of the way long ago revive in washstands and 
bedsteads. Departed spirits still rule us — but no longer 
metaphorically from their urns — they speak to us through 
the excited centre-table. I have heard of a particular 
teapoy that was vehement, slowly argumentative, blandly 
sympathetic, wildly romantic, and all with its legs alone. 
Little did John Chinaman dream what he was making, 
as little as John Shakespeare knew that he had begotten 



^t. 35] JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL 435 

the world's wonder William. A neighbor of ours has an 
exhorting boot- jack, and I expect every day to hear of 
the spirit of Diogenes in a wash-tub. Judge Wells (Aunt 
Wells, as he is affectionately called by the Bar) is such 
a powerful medium that he has to drive back the furni- 
ture from following him when he goes out, as one might 
a pack of too-affectionate dogs. I have no doubt I shall 
meet him some day with a footstool gambolling at his 
side or leaping up on his reluctant legs. . . . 



[^t. 35] 

To Miss Norton 

[BEVERLY A NEW ENGLAND SORRENTO] 

[BEVERLY], Ship "Underhill," Eldredge, Mistress^ 

Lat. 40° 20', Long, (bad observation), 
Islands of Sirens bearing E. S. E. 2^2 miles. 

August 14, 1854. 

. . . If I may trust a rather poor memory — without 
a book to make a crutch of — I ought to thank you for 
having given me so happy an example of the force of 
habit. Some four thousand years ago the fountain of 
Arethusa went down near Eleusis ( ?) and came up at 
Syracuse in Sicily, and now, translated to America and 
tolerably well bound, it has contrived to do the same 
thing between Shady Hill and Newport. I am quite 
content. I could not have a better minister resident, nor 
one less intrusive, only reminding you of me when you 
choose to give an audience, and then always saying bet- 
ter things than I could. So pray do not give her her 
passports yet. I shall bring the "Conversations" when I 
am happy enough to come myself. 

Now, in order that you may not fancy (as most per- 
sons who go to Rhode Island do) that Newport is the 
only place in the world where there is any virtue in salt 
water — I will say a word or two of Beverly. Country 
and sea-shore are combined here in the most charming 
way. Find the Yankee word for Sorrento, and you have 
Beverly — it is only the Bay of Naples translated into 
the New England dialect. The ocean and the forest are 
not estranged here, and the trees trust themselves down 



436 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [^Et. 35 

to the water's edge most confidingly. In some places the 
ivy plays in the air and the kelp in the water, like chil- 
dren of difi'erent ranks making shy advances to each 
other. Close behind us rises a rocky* hill, and the pine 
woods begin — wonderful woods, called Witch Woods by 
the natives because it is so easy to lose your way in them. 
All through them strange rocks bulge out — amphibious- 
looking hybrids between sea-shore and inland — their up- 
per edges fringed lightly with ferns that seem to entangle 
the sunshine and hold it fast, and their bases rough with 
queer lichens that look like water-weeds. I think there 
is more ocean than land in the blood of these rocks, and 
they always seem to me listening and waiting for the 
waves. If you leap down from one of them you sink 
ankle-deep in springy pine-tassel or moss. Somewhere in 
these woods is a visionary clearing and farm-house, which 
every one gets a glimpse of — but no man hath seen twice. 
You hear the crowing of cocks, the contented low of cat- 
tle rubbing their soft throats over the polished bars, and 
sometimes a muffled throb of flails; presently, through 
some wood-gap, you see the chimney and the blue breath 
of the hearth in the cool air, but when you have made 
your way through the next thicket, all is gone. I think 
it is the farm of one of the old Salem warlocks, and buy 
my vegetables warily, fearful of some ill thing. Here 
and there, climbing some higher rock, you get a gleam 
of sea through some scoop in the woods — a green cup 
filled half with potable gold. 

We are in a little house close upon the road, with the 
sea just below, as seen through a fringe of cedar, wild 
cherry, and barberry. Beyond this fringe is a sand-beach 
where we bathe. ... As I look out of my window I 
see the flicker of the sea's golden scales (which the moon 
will by and by touch with her long wand and turn to 
silver) stretching eastward forever. We are at the foot 
of a bay, across the mouth of which lies a line of islands 
— some bare rock, some shrubby, and some wooded. These 
are the true islands of the Sirens. One has been disen- 
chanted by a great hotel to which a steamboat runs in- 
numerably every day with a band — the energetic hoong! 
hoong! — hoong! hoong! hoong! — of the bass drum being 
all we hear. Our sunset is all in the southeast, and every 



.^t. 36] JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 437 

evening the clouds and islands bloom and the slow sails 
are yellowed and the dories become golden birds swing- 
ing on the rosy water. 

Well, well, after all, I am only saying that Nature is 
here as well as at NewiDort, and that she has not lost her 
knack at miracles. But at Newport you have no woods, 
and ours are so grand and deep and unconverted! They 
have those long pauses of conscious silence that are so 
fine, as if the spirit that inhabits them were hiding from 
you and holding its breath — and then all the leaves stir 
again, and the pines cheat the rocks with their mock 
surf, and that invisible bird that haunts such solitudes 
calls once and is answered, and then silence again. I 
would not have told you how much better this is than 
your Rhode Island glories — only that you Newport folks 
always seem a little (I must go to my Yankee) stuck up, 
as if Newport were all the world, and you the saints that 
had inherited it. But I hope to see you and Newport 
soon, and I will be lenient. You shall find in me the 
Beverly grandeur of soul which can acknowledge alien 
merit. 



[^t. 36] 

To C. E. Norton 

[WALT whitman] 

Dresden^ Monday, Oct. 12, 1855. 
. . . Whitman — I remember him of old; he used to 
write for the Deynocratic Review under O'Sullivan. He 
used to do stories then, a la Hawthorne. No, no, the 
kind of thing you describe won't do. When a man aims 
at originality he acknowledges himself consciously un- 
original, a want of self-respect which does not often go 
along with the capacity for great things. The great fel- 
lows have always let the stream • of their activity flow 
quietly — if one splashes in it he may make a sparkle, 
but he muddies it too, and the good folks down below (I 
mean posterity) will have none of it. We have a feeling 
of quiet and easy-going power in the really great that 
makes us willing to commit ourselves with them. Some- 
times I have thought that Michel Agnolo cocked his hat 



438 JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL [^t. 38 

a little wee bit too much, but after seeing his Prophets 
and Sybils (i y) you'll say I'm a wretch. It is not the 
volcanoes, after all, that give a lasting and serene delight, 
but those quiet old giants without a drop of fireblood in 
their veins that lie there basking their unwarmable old 
sides in the sun no more everlasting than they — patent 
unshiftable ballast that keep earth and human thought 
trimmed and true on an even keel. Ah, the. cold-blooded 
old monsters, how little they care for you and me! 
Homer, Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe — 
are they not everlasting boundary-stones that mark the 
limits of a noble reserve and self-restraint, and seem to 
say, ^'Outside of us is Chaos — go there if you like — we 
knew better — it is a dreary realm where moan the ghosts 
of dead-born children, and where the ghost of mad old 
Lear is king?" 

My dear Norton, upon my word I am not giving you an 
extract from my next lecture. ... 



[^t. 38] 

To C. E. Norton 
[morning walks] 

Cambridge, Dec. 31, 1857. 
My dear Charles, — 

At last! Like a true lazzarone as I am I have been 
waiting for sunshine before I wrote — I mean, for one of 
those moods that would make a letter worth sending; and 
such a mood is not dependent on mere cheerfulness, but 
almost altogether on having nothing to do, so that one 
can have time to hatch one's thoughts fairly out as one 
goes along. Pen and paper are never inspiring to me as 
conversation sometimes is, — and I was born to sit on a 
fence in the sun, and (if I had my own way) in those 
latter days of May, when the uneasy blue-bird shifts his 
freight of song from post to post, and the new green of 
spring is just passing from the miraculous into the fa- 
miliar. . . . 

For a lazy man I have a great deal to do. A magazine* 



* The Atlantic Monthly, which he was editing. 



^t. 39] JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL 439 

allows no vacations. What with manuscripts and proofs 
and what not, it either takes up or breaks up all one's 
time. . . . 

But even the magazine has its compensations. First, 
it has almost got me out of debt, and next, it compels me 
into morning walks to the printing-office. There is a 
little foot-path which leads along the river-bank, and it 
is lovely; whether in clear, cold mornings, when the fine 
filaments of the bare trees on the horizon seem floating 
up like sea-masses in the ether sea, or when (as yester- 
day) a gray mist fills our Cambridge cup and gives a 
doubtful loom to its snowy brim of hills, while the silent 
gulls wheel over the rustling cakes of ice which the 
Charles is whirling seaward. So I get my bits of country 
and can feel like a rustic still, but I miss the winter- 
birds I used to see at home. I continue to think the 
marshes lovely, and this winter they are covered with 
plump ricks, whereof some half-dozen standing on my 
own amphibious territory give me a feeling of ownership 
and dignity, albeit the hay does not belong to me. This 
only strengthens a faith I have long held, that we are 
only metaphysically and imaginatively rich as far as 
mere possession goes, and only actually so in what we 
give away. . . . 



[^t. 39] 

To Miss Norton 
[gout] 

Cambridge, Aug. 30, 1858. 
. . . Since I got your Berkshire letter I have come into 
an inheritance — I have had my life insured for forty 
years — I have been chained by one leg — I have suffered 
the torture of the Boot — I have said disrespectful things 
of my great-grandfather — I have received no sympathy, 
but have been laughed at — I have laughed myself, some- 
times on the wrong side of my mouth — in short, I have 
had an attack of the — no, I won't tell you what yet. I 
will prepare your mind. I will dignify it by poetic 
precedent. I may compare myself with Milton (in this 
respect). I may claim brotherhood with Gray and Wal- 



440 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [.Et. 39 

pole. In short I have had the gout. I cannot escape 
the conchision that I am a middle-aged man. I even 
fear that I shall have to wear a special shoe on my left 
foot. My verses will no longer be admired by young 
ladies of sixteen. On the other hand, I have been think- 
ing over the advantages. I find by the books that (if 
nothing happens) I shall live long. That it "relieves the 
system" — which seems to be true, for I have not been 
so well for a year. That in the course of time I shall 
be able to write my name and keep my milk-score with 
my knuckles. That I shall always have an excuse for 
being as testy as I please. On the whole, I think the 
odds are in favor of podagra. The worst danger is that 
the eyes are liable to be painfully affected with iritis — a 
comprehensive Greek term implying that the eye-wrong-is. 
But this is more than set off by the certainty that I shall 
never be subject to that in-great-toe otio to which Nereus, 
according to Horace, doomed the winds. (Since making 
these two puns I have carefully fumigated the paper, so 
that you need not fear infection.) As soon as my father 
heard of my trouble he came to see me, bringing a cyclo- 
paedia of medicine (from which he has selected a variety 
of choice complaints for himself), that my reading might 
be of an enlivening character. I do not find that there 
is any specific for the gout, but, on the similia-similihus 
principle, I eat "tomarters" daily. The disease derives 
its name (like mons a non movendo) from the patient's 
inability to go out. The ordinary derivation from gutta 
is absurd — for not only is the (]rerman form Gicht de- 
duced from gehen, but the persons incident to the mal- 
ady are precisely those who themselves (or their ancestors 
for them) have kept just this side of the gutter. I 
never heard that my great-grandfather died insolvent, but 
I am obliged to foot some of his bills- for port. I can't 
help thinking that I shall be worse if I indulge any longer 
in this kind of thing — so I shall stop. . . . 



u¥x 41] JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 441 

[.Et. 39] 

To O. W. Holmes 
[the "professor"; "samson's weapon"] 

Cambridge, Dec. 19, 1858. 
My dear Wendell, — 

Thank you ever so much for the "Autocrat," who comes 
at last drest like a gentleman. The color of the paper 
is just that which knowers love to see in old lace. 

"Run out" indeed! — who has been suggesting the dan- 
ger of that to you? I hope you will continue to run out 
in the style of the first "Professor." The comparison of 
the bung and the straw is excellent and touched a very 
tender spot in me, who was born between two cider-mills, 
and drew in much childish belly-ache from both, turned 
now by memory into something like the result that might 
follow nectar. 

You have been holding-in all this while — possumus 
omnes, we all play the 'possum — and are now getting your 
second wind. I like the new Professor better than the 
old Autocrat. You have filled no ten pages so wholly 
to my liking as in the January number. I have just 
read it and am delighted with it. The "Old Boston" is 
an inspiration. You have never been so wise and witty 
as in this last number. I hold up my left foot in token 
of my unanimity. 

The religious press (a true sour-cider press with belly- 
ache privileges attached) will be at you, but after smash- 
ing one of them you will be able to furnish yourself 
with a Samson's weapon for the rest of the Philisterei. 
Good-by. 

Always affectionately yours, 

J. R. Lowell. 
[^t. 41] 

To W. D. HOWELLS 

["hold yourself dear"] 

Cambridge, Monday, Aug., 1860. 
My dear young Friend, — 

Here is a note to Mr. Hawthorne, which you can use 
if you have occasion. 

Don't print too much and too soon; don't get married 



442 JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL \JEt. 42 

in a hurry: read what will make you tliinl-, not dream; 
hold yourself dear, and more power to your elbow! God 
bless you! Cordially yours, 

J. K. Lowell. 

A man may have ever so much in him, but ever so much 
depends on how he gets it out. 

Finis, quoad Biglow. 

• To Nathaniel Hawthorne 

[WILLIAM DEAN ITOWELLS] 

Cambridge, Aug. 5, 1860. 
My dear Hawthorne, — 

I have no masonic claim upon you except community 
of tobacco, and the young man who brings this does not 
smoke. 

But he wants to look at you, which will do you no 
harm, and him a great deal of good. 

His name is Howells, and he is a line young fellow, and 
has written several poems in the Atlantic, which of course 
you have never read, because you don't do such things 
yourself, and are old enough to know better. 

When I think how much you might have profited by 
the perusal of certain verses of somebody who shall be 
nameless — but, no matter! If my judgment is good for 
anything, this youth has more in him than any of our 
younger fellows in the way of rhyme. 

Of course he can't hope to rival the Consule Planco 
men. Therefore let him look at you, and charge it 

To yours always, 

J. R. Lowell. 
[^t. 42] 

To Miss Norton 
[a misdated letter] 
Elmwood, the day before you wrote 
your last letter; viz., Sept. 28, 1861. 
My dear Sibyl, — 

Will you kindly tell me what has happened next week, 
so that I may be saved from this daily debauch of news- 
papers? How many "heroic Mulligans" who "meurent et 
ne se rendent pas" to the reporters, with the privilege of 



.'Et. 42] JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL 443 

living and surrendering to the enemy? How many ''ter- 
rific conflicts" near Cheat Mountain (ominous name), 
with one wounded on our side, and enemy's loss supposed 
to be heavy? How many times we are to save Kentucky 
and lose our self respect? How many times the Potomac 
is to be "hermetically sealed"? How often Mr. Seward 
is to put newspaper correspondents on the level of Secre- 
taries of State? etc., etc. I ask all these questions be- 
cause your so-welcome letter, which I received oil Wednes- 
day the 25th, was dated to-morrow the 29th. There is 
something very impressive to the imagination in a letter 
from the future, and to be even a day in advance of the 
age is a good deal — how much more five or six ! How does 
it seem to come back ? Is not everything weary and stale ? 
Or do you live all the time in a balloon, thus seeing over 
the lines of Time, the old enemy of us all? Pray tell me 
how much foolisher I shall be this day twelve-month. 
Well, at any rate, you can't see far enough to find the 
day when your friendship shall not be one of my dearest 
possessions. . .. . 

Has it begun to be cold with you? I had a little Italian 
bluster of brushwood fire yesterday morning, but the 
times -are too hard with me to allow of such an extrava- 
gance except on the brink of gelation. The horror of my 
tax-bill has so infected my imagination that I see myself 
and all my friends begging entrance to the P. H. (From 
delicacy I use initials.) I fancy all of you gathering fuel 
on the Newport beaches. I hope you will have lots of 
wrecks — Southern privateers, of course. Don't ever over- 
load yourself. I can't bear to think of you looking like 
the poor women I met in the Pineta at Ravenna just 
at dusk, having the air of moving druidical altars or 
sudden toadstools. 

Our trees are beginning to turn — the maples are all 
ablaze, and even in our ashes live their wonted fires. The 
Virginia creeper that I planted against the old horse- 
chestnut stump trickles down in blood as if its support 
were one of Dante's living wood. The haze has begun, 
and the lovely mornings when one blesses the sun. I 
confess our summer weather too often puts one in mind 
of Smithfield and the Book of Martyrs. 

I have had an adventure. I have dined with a prince. 



444 JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL [.Et. 42 

After changing my mind twenty times, I at last sat 
down desperately and "had the honor to accept." And 
I was glad of it — for H. I. H.'s resemblance to his uncle 
is something wonderful. I had always supposed the por- 
traits of the elder Nap imperialized, but Jerome N. looks 
as if he had sat for that picture where the emperor lies 
reading on a sofa — you remember it. A trifle weaker 
about the mouth, suggesting loss of teeth; but it is not 
so, for his teeth are exquisite. He looks as you would 
fancy his uncle if he were Empereur de Ste. Helene, 
roi d'Yvetot. I sat next to colonel Ragon, who led the 
forlorn hope at the taking of the Malakoff and was at 
the siege of Rome. He was a very pleasant fellow. (1 
don't feel quite sure of my English yet — J'ai tant parle 
Frangais que je trouve beaucoup de difficulte a m'y 
deshabituer.) Pendant — I mean during — the dinner 
Ooendel Homes recitait des vers vraiment jolis. H arri- 
vait deja au bout, quand M. Ragon, se tournant vers moi 
d'un air mele d'intelligence et d'interrogation, et a la 
meme fois d'un Colomb qui fait la decouverte d'un monde 
tout nouveau, s'ecria, ''C'est en vers. Monsieur, n'est ce 
pas?" St'anegdot charmang j'ai rahcontay ah Ooendell 
daypwee, avec days eclah de reer. (See Bolmar.) Mr. 
Everett made a speech oii il y avait un soupQon de lon- 
gueur. The prince replied most gracefully, as one 

"Who saying nothing yet saith all.'' 

He speaks French exquisitely — foi de professeur. Ho 
parlato anche Italiano col Colonello, chi e stato sei anni 
in Italia, and I believe I should have tried Hebrew with 
the secretary of legation, who looked like a Jew, if I had 
had the chance. After dinner the prince was brought up 
and presented to me! Please remember that when we 
meet. The political part of our conversation of course 
I am not at liberty to repeat(!!), but he asked me 
whether I myself occupied of any work literary at pres- 
ent? to which I answered, no. Then he spoke of the 
factories at Lowell and Lawrence, and said how much the 
intelligence of the operatives had interested him, etc., 
etc. He said that Boston seemed to have much more 
movement intellectual than the rest of the country (to 
which I replied, ^ous le croyons, au moins) ; astonished 



J£t. 46] JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL 445 

himself at the freedom of opinion here, etc., at the ab- 
sence of Puritanism and the like. I thought him very 
intelligent and thanked him for his bo deescoor o saynah 
Frongsay shure lays ahfair deetahlee. (See Bolmar again, 
which I took in my pocket.) . . . 

Ever yours. 

J. E. L. 
[.Et. 46] 

To Miss Norton 
[hot weather; the "commemoration ode"'] 

Elmwood, July 25, 1865. 
My dear Jane, — 

However statures and wits may degenerate, and we 
become, as Donne says, "our fathers' shadows cast at 
noon," July keeps his old force and is pleasing himself 
to-day with a noble display of it. It is so hot that the 
very locusts are dumb and cannot endure to carry on their 
own trade of spinning out "their long-drawn, red-hot 
wires of shrilly song," as they are called in a lost poem 
of Pindar's, from which I translate by direct inspiration 
of a scholiast turned table-tipper. Each under his cool 
leaf is taking his siesta. There is an unpleasing moisture 
even in the slender palms of the flies that fondle the 
restiff tip of my nose. The thin gray lives of mosquitoes 
are burnt up and evaporate. My anxious shirt-collar still 
stiffly holds its imdiminished state, but with a damp fore- 
boding of its doom. In short, dear Jane, it is just such 
a day as the Clerk of the Weather, abusing his oppor- 
tunities, invariably appoints for public festivities — just 
such a day as were the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday 
of last week. Nevertheless, I am here among my books 
and I am in a literal sense alive. I eat and smoke and 
sleep and go through all the nobler functions of a man 
mechanically still, and wonder at myself as at something 
outside of and alien to Me. For have I not worked my- 
self lean on an "Ode for Commemoration"? Was I not 
so rapt with the fervor of conception as I have not been 
these ten years, losing my sleep, my appetite, and my 
flesh, those attributes to which I before alluded as nobly 
uniting us in a common nature with our kind? Did I 
not for two days exasperate everybody that came near 



446 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [^t. 46 

me by reciting passages in order to try them on? Did I 
not even fall backward and downward to the old folly 
of hopeful youth, and think I had written something 
really good at last? And am I not now enduring those 
retributive dumps which ever follow such sinful exulta- 
tions, the Erynnyes of Vanity? Did not I make John 
Holmes and William Story shed tears by my recitation 
of it (my ode) in the morning, both of 'em fervently 
declaring it was "noble"? Did not ev«3n the silent Rowse 
declare 'twas in a higher mood than much or most of 
later verse ? Did not I think, in my nervous exhilaration, 
that 'twould be the feature (as reporters call it) of the 
day? And, after all, have I not a line in the Daily 
Advertiser calling it a "graceful poem" (or "some grace- 
ful verses," I forget which), which "was received with 
applause" ? Why, Jane, my legs are those of grasshoppers, 
and my head is an autumn threshing-floor, still beating 
with the alternate flails of strophe and antistrophe, and 
an infinite virtue is gone out of me somehow — but it 
seems not into my verse as I dreamed. Well, well, Charles 
will like it — but then he always does, so what's the use ?. 
I am Icarus now with the cold salt sea over him instead 
of the warm exulting blue of ether. I am gone under, 
and I will never be a fool again. You read between the 
lines, don't you, my dear old friend, if I may dare to 
call a woman so ? You know my foibles — women* always 
know our foibles, confound them! — though they always 
wink at the right moment and seem not to see — bless 
them! Like a boy, I mistook my excitement. for inspira- 
tion, and here I am in, the mud. You see also I am. a 
little disappointed and a little few (un petit peu) vexed. 
I did not make the hit I expected, and am ashamed at 
having been again tempted into thinking I could write 
poetry, a delusion from which I have been tolerably free 
these dozen years. . . . 

26th. 
The Storys have got home and look as young as ever. I 
:first saw William on Commencement day, and glad enough 
I was. A friendship counting nearly forty years is the 
finest kind of shade-tree I know of. One is safe from 
thunder beneath it, as under laurel — nay, more safe, for 
the critical bolts do not respect the sacred tree any more 



^t. 48] JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL 447 

than if it were so much theatrical green baize. To be 
sure, itself is of the harmless theatrical kind often 
enough. Well, he and two more came up hither after 
dinner, and we talked and laughed and smoked and 
drank Domdechanei till there wasn't a bald head nor a 
gray hair among us. Per Bacco and tobacco, how wisely- 
silly we were ! I forgot for a few blessed hours that I was 
a professor, and felt as if I were something real. But 
Phi Beta came next day, and wasn't I tired! Presiding 
from 9 A. M. till G^/^ P. M. is no joke, and then up next 
morning at Yo past 4 to copy out and finish my ode. I 
have not got cool yet (I mean as to nerves), and lie 
awake at night thinking how much better my verses might 
have been, only I can't make 'em so. Well, I am printing 
fifty copies in 4to, and Charles will like it-, as I said 
before, and I sha'n't, because I thought too well of it 



at first. . 
[^t. 48] 



Yours always, 

J. R. L. 



To C. E. Norton 
["such stuff as stars are made of"] 

Elmwood, July 18, 1867. 
. . . Emerson's oration was more disjointed than usual, 
even with him. It began nowhere and ended everywhere, 
and yet, as always with that divine man, it left you 
feeling that something beautiful had passed that way — 
something more beautiful than anything else, like the 
rising and setting of stars. Every possible criticism 
might have been made on it but one — that it was not 
noble. There was a tone in it that awakened all ele- 
vating associations. He boggled, he lost his place, he 
had to put on his glasses; but it was as if a creature from 
some fairer world had lost his way in our fogs, and it 
was our fault, not his. It was chaotic, but it was all 
such stuff as stars are made of, and you couldn't help 
feeling that, if you waited awhile, all that was nebulous 
would be whirled into planets, and would assume the 
mathematical gravity of system. All through it I felt 
something in me that cried "Ha, ha, to the sound of the 
trumpets!". . . 



448 JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL [.Et. 50 

[^t. 50] 

To Miss Norton 
[on letter-writing] 

Elmwood, April 6th, 1869. 
Authors, my altogether dear woman, can't write 
letters. At best they squeeze out an essay now and then, 
burying every natural sprout in a dry and dreary sand- 
flood, as unlike as possible to those delightful freshets 
with which your heart overflows the paper. They are 
thinking of their punctuation, of crossing their fs and 
dotting their i's, and cannot forget themselves in their 
correspondent, which I take to be the true recipe for a 
letter. . . . Now, you know that the main excellence of 
Cambridge is that nothing ever happens there. Since 
the founding of the College, in 1636, there has been, 
properly speaking, no event till J. H. began to build 
his shops on the parsonage-lot. . . . Elmwood is Cam- 
bridge at the fifth power, and indeed one of the great 
merits of the country is that it narcotizes instead of 
stimulating. Even Voltaire, who had wit at will, found 
Eerney an opiate, and is forced to apologize to his clever- 
est correspondent, Mme. du Defland (do you remark the 
adroitness of the compliment in my italicized pronoun?) 
for the prolonged gaps, or yawns, in his letter-writing. 
Cowper, a first-rate epistolizer, was sometimes driven to* 
the wall in the same way. There is something more than 
mere vacancy, there is a deep principle of human nature, 
in the first question of man to man when they meet — 
"What is the news?" A hermit has none. I fancy if I 
were suddenly snatched away to London, my brain would 
prickle all over, as a foot that has been asleep when the 
blood starts in it again. Books are good dry forage; 
we can keep alive on them; but, after all, men are the 
only fresh pasture. . . . 

We have had a very long winter with very little 
snow. It is still cold, but the birds are come, and the 
impatient lovers among them insist on its being spring. 
I heard a blue-bird several weeks ago, but the next day 
came six inches of snow. The sparrows were the first 
persistent singers, and yesterday the robins were loud 



JEt.50-] JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL 449 

I have no doubt the pines at Shady Hill are all a-creak 
with 'blackbirds by this time. . . . 

I have nothing else in the way of novelty, except an 
expedient I hit upon for my hens who were backward 
with their eggs. On rainy days I set William to reading 
aloud to them the Lay-Sermons of Coleridge, and the 
effect was magical. Whether their consciences were 
touched or they wished to escape the preaching, I know 
not. . . . 



[.Et. 50] 

To T. B. Aldrich 
["the story of a bad boy"] 

Elmwood, Nov. 30, 1869. 
My dear Aldrich, — 

It is a capital little book — but I had read it all before, 
and liked it thoroughly. It has been pretty much all 
my novel reading all summer. I think it is wholesome, 
interesting, and above all, natural. The only quarrel I 
have with you is that I found in it that infamous word 
"transpired." E-pluribus-unum it ! Why not "hap- 
pened"? You are on the very brink of the pit. I read 
in the paper t'other day that some folks had "extended 
a dinner to the Hon." Somebody or other. There was 
something pleasing to the baser man in fancying it held 
out in a pair of tongs, as too many of our Hon'bles 
deserve — but consider where English is going! 

I know something about Rivermouth myself; only be- 
fore you were born. I remember in my seventh year 
opening a long red chest in the "mansion" of the late 
famous Dr. Brackett, and being confronted with a skel- 
eton — the first I had ever seen. The "Mysteries of 
Udolpho" were nothing to it, for a child, somehow, is 
apt to think that these anatomies are always made so by 
foul means, a creed which I still hold to a certain extent. 

However, I am not writing to tell you about myself — 
but merely to say how much I like your little book. I 
wish it had been twice as large! I shall send you a 
thin one of my own before long, and shall be content if 
it give you half the pleasure. Make my kind remem- 



450 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [^t. 53 

brances acceptable to Mrs. Aldrich, and tell the twins I 
wish they may both grow np Bad Boys. 

Cordially yours, 

J. R. Lowell. 
[^t. 53] 

To C. E. Norton 

['"the idylls of the king"' and ""real ARTHURIAN 

romance""] 
Hotel de Lorraine, No. 7 Rue de Beaune, 

Paris, Dec. 4, 1872. 
. . . Oddly enough when I got your letter about Ten- 
nyson's poems I had just finished reading a real Arthu- 
rian romance — "Fergus" — not one of the best, certainly, 
but having that merit of being a genuine blossom for 
which no triumph of artifice can compensate; having, in 
short, that woodsy hint and tantalization of perfume 
which is so infinitely better than anything more de- 
fined. Emerson had left me Tennyson's book; so last 
night I took it to bed with me and finished it at a 
gulp — reading like a naughty boy till half-past one. 
The contrast between his pomp and my old rhymer's 
simpleness was very curious and even instructive. One 
bit of the latter (which I cannot recollect elsewhere) 
amused me a good deal as a Yankee. When Fergus 
comes to Arthur's court and Sir Kay "sarses" him 
(which, you know, is de rigeur in the old poems), Sir 
Gawain saunters up whittling a stich as a medicine 
against ennui. So afterwards, when Arthur is dreadfully 
bored by hearing no news of Fergus, he reclines at table 
without any taste for his dinner, and whittles to purge 
his heart of melancholy. I suppose a modern poet would 
not dare to come so near Nature as this lest she should 
fling up her heels. But I am not yet "aff wi' the auld 
love," nor quite "on with the new." There are very fine 
childish things in Tennyson's poems and fine manly 
things, too, as it seems to me, but I conceive the theory 
to be wrong. I have the same feeling (I am not wholly 
sure of its justice) that I have when I see these modern- 
mediaeval pictures. I am defrauded; I do not see reality, 
but a masquerade. The costumes are all that is genuine, 
and the people inside them are shams — which, I take it, 



^t.59] JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 451 

is just the reverse of what ought to be. One special 
criticism I should make on Tennyson's new Idylls, and 
that is that the similes are so often dragged in by the hair. 
They seem to be taken (a la Tom Moore) from note- 
books, and not suggested by the quickened sense of asso- 
ciation in the glow of composition. Sometimes it almost 
seems as if the verses were made for the similes, instead 
of being the cresting of a wave that heightens as it rolls. 
This is analogous to the costume objection and springs 
perhaps from the same cause — the making of poetry with 
malice prepense. However, I am not going to forget 
the lovely things that Tennyson has written, and I think 
they give him rather hard measure now. However, it is 
the natural recoil of a too rapid fame. Wordsworth had 
the true kind — an unpopularity that roused and stimu- 
lated while he was strong enough to despise it, and honor, 
obedience, troops of friends, when the grasshopper would 
have been a burthen to the drooping shoulders. Tenny- 
son, to be sure, has been childishly petulant; but w4iat 
have these whipper-snappers, who cry "Go up, bald head," 
done that can be named with some things of his? He 
has been the greatest artist in words we have had since 
Gray — and remember how Gray holds his own with little 
fuel, but real fire. He had the secret of the inconsumable 
oil, and so, I fancy, has Tennyson. 

I keep on picking up books here and there, but I shall 
be forced to stop, for I find I have got beyond my in- 
come. Still, I shall try gradually to make my Old 
French and Provengal collection tolerably complete, for 
the temptation is great where the field is definitely 
bounded. . . . 



[^t. 59] 

To Miss Grace Norton 
[immortality] 

Madrid, March 7, 1878. 

... I don't care where the notion of immortality came 

from. If it sprang out of a controlling necessity of our 

nature, some instinct of self-protection and preservation, 

like the color of some of Darwin's butterflies, at any 



452 JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL [^t. 63 

rate it is there and as real as that, and I mean to hold 
it fast. Suppose we don't know, how much do we know 
after all? There are times when one doubts his own 
identity, even his own material entity, even the solidity 
of the very earth on which he walks. One night, the 
last time I was ill, I lost all consciousness of my flesh. 
I was dispersed through space in some inconceivable 
fashion, and mixed with the Milky Way. It was with 
great labor that I gathered myself again and brought 
myself within compatible limits, or so it seemed ; and yet 
the very fact that I had a confused consciousness all 
the while of the Milky Way as something to be mingled 
with proved that I was there as much an individual as 
ever. . . . 

[yEt. 63] 

To W. D. HOWELLS 

[advice to an author] 
AsHRiDGE, Berkhampstead, Dcc. 21, 1882. 
Dear How ells, — 

I was very glad to get your letter, though it put me 
under bonds to be wiser than I have ever had the skill 
to be. If I remember rightly, Panurge's doubts were 
increased by consulting the Oracle, but how did the 
Oracle feel? Did it ever occur to you that a certain 
share of our sympathy should go in that direction? 

My best judgment is this, and like all good judgment 
it is to a considerable degree on both sides of the ques- 
tion. If you are able now, without overworking mind or 
body, to keep the wolf from the door and to lay by 
something for a rainy day — and I mean, of course, with- 
out being driven to work with your left hand because 
the better one is tired out — I should refuse the offer, or 
should hesitate to accept it. If you are a systematic 
worker, independent of moods, and sure of your genius 
whenever you want it, there might be no risk in accepting. 
You would have the advantage of a fixed income to fall 
back on. Is this a greater advantage than the want of 
it would be as a spur to industry? Was not the occa- 
sion of Shakespeare's plays (I don't say the motive of 
'em) that he had to write? And are any of us likely to 



^t.63] JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL 453 

be better inspired than he? Does not inspiration, in 
some limited sense at least, come with the exercise there- 
of, as the appetite with eating? Is not your hand better 
for keeping it in, as they say? A professorship takes a 
great deal of time, and, if you teach in any more direct 
way than by lectures, uses up an immense stock of nerves. 
Your inevitable temptation (in some sort your duty) will 
be to make yourself learned — which you haven't the least 
need to be as an author (if you only have me at your 
elbow to correct your English now and then, naughty 
boy!). If you can make your professorship a thing apart 
— but can you and be honest? I believe the present 
generation doesn't think I was made for a poet, but I 
think I could have gone nearer convincing 'em if I had 
not estranged the muse by donning a professor's gown. 
I speak of myself because you wanted my experience. I 
am naturally indolent, and being worked pretty hard 
in the College, was willing to be content with the amount 
of work that was squeezed out of me by my position, 
and let w^hat my nature might otherwise have forced me 
into go. As I said before, if you can reckon on your 
own temperament, accept. If you have a doubt, don't. 
I think you will divine what I am driving at. 

I find everybody here reading your books^ and you 
know very well how much pleasure that gives me. They 
wish to see you, and I hope when you come back you 
will stay and let 'em do it. I wish you could know 
my hostess, for instance — noble in all senses of the word. 
I am staying here for a few days with a large party in 
a house as big as a small town, and a beautiful country 
of hill and dale and gray birch wood^. Enough to say 
that there was once a convent here. The monks always 
had an eye for country. 

You will have to be very fine when you show your- 
self in England, to look like the portrait I have painted 
of you — but I am willing to take the venture. 

Inexorable lunch has sounded, and I must say good- 
by. I should say, on the whole — it is safe to ask my 
advice, but not to follow" it. But then people never do. 

. . . Love to all. 

Affectionately yours, 

J. R. L. 



454 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL [JEt. 70 

[^t. 70] 

To Mrs. Leslie Stephen 
[a grave rook] 

Whitby, Sept. 11, 1889. 

. . . For the last few days we have been having Amer- 
ican weather, except for the haze which softens and 
civilizes (perhaps I should say, artistically generalizes) 
all it touches, like the slower hand of time. It does in 
a moment what the other is too long about for the brevity 
of our lives. How I do love this unemphatic landscape, 
which suggests but never defines, in which so much 
license is left to conjecture and divination, as when one 
looks into the mysterious beyond. And how the robins 
and some other little minstrels whose names I don't know 
keep on pretending it is the very fresh of the year. I 
think few people are made as happy by the singing of 
birds as I, and this autumnal music (unknown at home), 
every bush a song, is one of the things that especially 
endear England to me. Even without song, birds are 
a perpetual delight, and the rooks alone are enough to 
make this country worth living in. I wish you could 
see a rook who every morning busies himself among the 
chimney-pots opposite my chamber window. For a good 
while I used to hear his chuckle, but thought he was only 
flying over. But one day I got out of bed and looked 
out. There he was on the top of a chimney opposite, 
perambulating gravely, and now and then cocking his 
head and looking down a flue. Then he would chuckle 
and go to another. Then to the next chimney and 
da capo. He found out what they were going to have for 
breakfast in every house, and whether he enjoyed an 
imaginary feast or reckoned on a chance at some of the 
leavings I know not, but he was evidently enjoying him- 
self, and that is always a consoling thing to see. Even 
in the stingy back-yards of these houses too, wherever 
there is a disconsolate shrub, a robin comes every morn- 
ing to cheer it up a bit and help it along through the 
day. 

Since I wrote what I did about the weather (one 
should always let the Eumenides alone) it has begun 
to rain, but gently, like a rain that was trying to dis- 



^t. 70] JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL 455 

criminate between the just and the unjust, and sympa- 
thized with those confiding enough to leave their um- 
brellas behind them (I hate to expose mine any more 
than I can help, for reasons of my own). So the rain 
let me get back dry from the beach, whither I had gone 
for a whilf of salt air and a few earfuls of that muffled 
crash of the surf which is so soothing — perpetual ruin 
with perpetual renewal. 

I wonder if your moors have been as gracious as ours 
this year. I never know how deeply they impress me 
till long after I have left them, and then I wonder at 
the store of images wherewith they have peopled my 
memory. But what is the use of my asking you any 
questions when you tell me you could not read my last 
letter? Was it the blue paper with its ribs that made 
a corduroy road for my pen to jolt over, I wonder, or 
my failing eyesight, or — and this is saddest to think of — 
the dulness of the letter itself? Is this better? I am 
trying to write as well as I can for my dear and admirable 
friend, but what would you have? .How should one write 
letters worth reading who has so many to write as I? 
But never mind. The true use of a letter is to let one 
know that one is remembered and valued, and as you 
are sure of that, perhaps I need not write at all! No, 
the true use of writing is that it brings your friend to 
you as you write, and so I have your sweet society for 
a while, and you need have only just as much of mine 
as you choose to give yourself. . . . 



[^t. 70] 

To THE Misses Lawrence 
[life at elmwood] 

Elmavood, Cambridge, Mass., 

Jan. 2, 1890. 
. . . Here I am again in the house, where I was born 
longer ago than you can remember, though I wish you 
more New Year's days than I have had. 'Tis a pleasant 
old house just about twice as old as I am, four miles 
from Boston, in what was once the country and is now 
a populous suburb. But it still has some ten acres of 



456 JAMES KUSSELL LOWELL [.Et. TO 

open about it, and some fine old trees. When the worst 
comes to the worst (if I live so long) I shall still have 
four and a half acres left with the house, the rest be- 
longing to my brothers and sisters or their heirs. It is 
a square house with four rooms on a floor, like some 
houses of the Georgian era I have seen in English pro- 
vincial towns, only they are of brick and this is of wood. 
But it is solid with its heavy oaken beams, the spaces 
between which in the four outer walls are filled in with 
brick, though you mustn't fancy a brick-and-timber 
house, for outwardly it is sheathed with wood. Inside 
there is much wainscot (of deal) painted white in the 
fashion of the time when it was built. It is very sunny, 
the sun rising so as to shine (at an acute angle, to be 
sure) through the northern windows, and going round 
the other three sides in the course of the day. There is 
a pretty staircase with the quaint old twisted banisters — 
which they call balusters now, but mine are banisters. 
My library occupies two rooms opening into each other 
by arches at the sides of the ample chimneys. The 
trees I look out on are the earliest things I remember. 
There you have me in my new-old quarters. But you 
must not fancy a large house — rooms sixteen feet square 
and, on the ground floor, nine high. It was large, as 
things went here, when it was built, and has a certain 
air of amplitude about it as from some inward sense 
of dignity. 

Now for out of doors. What do you suppose the ther- 
mometer is about on this second day of January? I was 
going to say he was standing on his head — at any rate 
he has forgotten what he's about, and is marking sixty- 
three degrees Fahrenheit on the north side of the house 
and in the shade ! Where is that sense of propriety that 
once belonged to the seasons? This is flat communism, 
January insisting on going halves with May. News I 
have none, nor other resources, as you see, save those of 
the special correspondent, who takes to description when 
events fail. Yes, I have one event. I dine to-night with 
Mr. R. C. Winthrop, who remembers your father very 
well nearly sixty years ago. 

I have all my grandchildren with me, five of them, and 
the eldest boy is already conspiring with a beard! It is 



JEt. 44] WALT WHITMAN 457 

awful, this stealthy advance of Time's insupportable foot. 
There are two ponies for the children and two dogs, bull- 
terriers, and most amiable creatures. This is my estab- 
lishment, and four of the weans have had the grippe. 
I remember it here in '31, I think it was. You see I 
make all I can of age's one privilege — that of having a 
drearier memory than other folks. 

I forgot one thing. There are plenty of mice in the 
walls, and, now that I can't go to the play with you, I 
assist at their little tragedies and comedies behind the 
wainscot in the night-hours and build up plots in my 
fancy. 'Tis a French comjpany, for I hear them dis- 
tinctly say wee; wee, sometimes. My life, you see, is 
not without its excitements, and what are your London 
mice doing that is more important? I see you are to 
have a Parnell scandal at last, but I overheard an elope- 
ment the other night behind the wainscot, and the so- 
licitors talking it over with the desolated husband after- 
wards. It was very exciting. Ten thousand grains of 
corn damaged! 

Good-by, and take care of yourselves till I come witli 
the daffodils. I wish you both many a happy New Year 
and a share for me in some of them. Poets seem to live 
long nowadays, and I, too, live in Arcadia after my 
own fashion. 

Affectionately yours. 

J. E. L. 



[.Et.44] WALT WHITMAN 

1819-1892 
To HIS Mother 
[in a war hospital] 

Washington July 22, 1863 
This afternoon, July 22d, I have spent a long time 
with Oscar F. Wilber, Company G, 154th New York, 
low with chronic diarrhoea and a bad wound also. He 
asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament. 
I complied, and ask'd him what I should read. He said, 
"Make your own choice." I open'd at the close of one 
of the first books of the evangelists, and read the chap- 



458 CHARLES KINGSLEY [^t. 23 

ters describing the latter hours of Christ, and the scenes 
at the crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man ask'd 
me to read the following chapter also, how Christ rose 
again. I read very slowly, for Oscar was feeble. It 
pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. 
He ask'd me if I enjoy'd religion. I said, "Perhaps not, 
my dear, in the way you mean, and yet, may-be, it is the 
same thing." He said, "It is my chief reliance." He 
talked of death, and said he did not fear it. I said, 
"Why, Oscar, don't you think you will get well?" He 
said, "I may, but it is not probable." He spoke calmly 
of his condition. The wound was very bad; it dis- 
charg'd much. Then the diarrhoea had prostrated him, 
and I felt he was even then the same as dying. He 
behaved very manly and affectionate. The kiss I gave 
him as I was about leaving he return'd fourfold. He 
gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alle- 
ghany Post Office, Cattaraugus County, N. Y. I had 
several such interviews with him. He died a few days 
after the one just described. 



[^t.23] CHARLES KINGSLEY 

1819-1875 
To Mr. Wood 

["the everlasting hills and the everlasting bores"] 

[1842] 
Peter! 

Whether in the glaring saloons of Almack's, or making 
love in the equestrian stateliness of the park, or the lux- 
urious recumbency of the ottoman, whether breakfasting 
at one, or going to bed at three, thou art still Peter, the 
beloved of my youth, the staff of my academic days, the 
regret of my parochial retirement! — Peter! I am alone! 
Around me are the everlasting hills, and the everlasting 
bores of the country! My parish is peculiar for nothing 
but want of houses and abundance of peat bogs; my 
parishioners remarkable only for aversion to education, 
and a predilection for fat bacon. I am waiting my 
sweetness on the desert air — I say my sweetness, for I 



JEt 35] GEOKGE ELIOT 459 

have given up smoking, and smell no more. Oh, Peter, 
Peter, come down and see me! Oh that I could behold 
your head towering above the fir-trees that surround my 
lonely dwelling. Take pity on me! I am ''like a kitten 
in the washhouse copper with the lid on!" And, Peter, 
prevail on some of your friends here to give me a day's 
trout-fishing, for my hand is getting out of practice. 
But, Peter, I am, considering the oscillations and perplex 
circumgurgitations of this piece-meal world, an improved 
man. I am much more happy, much more comfortable, 
reading, thinking, and doing my duty — much more than 
ever I did before in my life. Therefore I am not dis- 
contented with my situation, or regretful that I buried 
my first-class in a country curacy, like the girl who shut 
herself up in a band-box on her wedding night (vide 
Kogers's "Italy")- And my lamentations are not gen- 
eral (for I do not want an inundation of the froth and 
tide-wash of Babylon the Great), but particular, being 
solely excited by want of thee, oh Peter, who art very 
pleasant to me, and wouldst be more so if thou wouldst 
come and eat my mutton, and drink my wine, and admire 
my sermons, some Sunday at Eversley. 
Your faithful friend, 

Boanerges Eoar-at-the Clods. 



[^t.35] GEOEGE ELIOT 

1819-1880 
To Mrs. Bray 

[GEORGE HENRY LEWES] 

4th September, 1855. 
... If there is any one action or relation of my life 
which is, and always has been, profoundly serious, it is 
my relation to Mr. Lewes. It is, however, natural enough 
that you should mistake me in many ways, for not only 
are you unacquainted with Mr. Lewes's real character 
and the course of his actions, but also it is several years 
now since you and I were much together, and it is 
possible that the modifications my mind has undergone 
may be quite in the opposite direction of what you im- 



460 GEOKGE ELIOT [^t. 35 

agine. No one can be better aware than yourself that 
it is possible for two people to hold different opinions 
on momentous subjects with equal sincerity, and an 
equally earnest conviction that their respective opinions 
are alone the truly moral ones. If we differ on the 
subject of the marriage laws, I at least can believe of 
you that you cleave to what you believe to be good; 
and I don't know of anything in the nature of your 
views that should prevent you from believing the same 
of me. How far we differ I think we neither of us know, 
for I am ignorant of your precise views; and, apparently, 
you attribute to me both feelings and opinions which are 
not mine. We cannot set each other quite right in this 
matter in letters, but one thing I can tell you in few 
words. Light and easily broken ties are what I neither 
desire theoretically nor could live for practically. Women 
who are satisfied with such ties do not act as I have done. 
That any unworldly, unsuperstitious person who is suf- 
ficiently acquainted with the realities of life can pro- 
nounce my relation to Mr. Lewes immoral, I can only 
understand by remembering how subtile and complex are 
the influences that mould opinion. But I do remember 
this : and I indulge in no arrogant or uncharitable 
thoughts about those who condemn us, even though we 
might have expected a somewhat different verdict. Erom 
the majority of persons, of course, we never looked for 
anything but condemnation. We are leading no life of 
self-indulgence, except, indeed, that, being happy in each 
other, we find everything easy. We are working hard 
to provide for others better than we provide for ourselves,, 
and to fulfil every responsibility that lies upon us. Levity 
and pride would not be a sufficient basis for that. Par- 
don me if, in vindicating myself from some unjust con- 
clusions, I seem too cold and self-asserting. I should 
not care to vindicate myself if I did not love you and 
desire to relieve you of the pain which you say these 
conclusions have given you. Whatever I may have mis- 
interpreted before, I do not misinterpret your letter this 
morning, but read in it nothing else than love and kind- 
ness towards me, to which my heart fully answers yes. 
I should like never to write about my self again; it is 
not healthy to dwell on one's own feelings and conduct. 



^t. 37] MATTHEW ARNOLD 461 

but only to try and live more faithiully and lovingly 
each fresh day. I think not one of the endless words 
and deeds of kindness and forbearance you have ever 
shown me has vanished from my memory. I recall them 
often, and feel, as about everything else in the past, 
how deficient I have been in almost every relation of my 
life. But that deficiency is irrevocable, and I can find 
no strength or comfort except in "pressing forward 
towards the things that are before," and trying to make 
the present better than the past. But if we should never 
be very near each other again, dear Cara, do bear this 
faith in your mind, that I was not insensible or un- 
grateful to all your goodness, and that I am one among 
the many for whom you have not lived in vain. I am 
very busy just now, and have been obliged to write hastily. 
Bear this in mind, and believe that no meaning is mine 
which contradicts my assurance that I am your affec- 
tionate and earnest friend. 



[^t. 37] MATTHEW ARNOLD 

1822-1888 
To Miss Arnold 

[TENNYSON ^DEFICIENT IN INTELLECTUAL POWER'''] 

2 Chester Square, December 17, 1860. 
... I have at last got the Commissioner's distinct 
leave to publish my Report, with additions, as a book. It 
will appear in February. By the time you come I hope 
to have finished the introduction to that and to have got 
it printed, and to be well plunged in the Middle Age. I 
have a strong sense of the irrationality of that period, 
and of the utter folly of those who take it seriously, and 
play at restoring it; still, it has poetically the greatest 
charm and refreshment possible for me. The fault I find 
with Tennyson in his Idylls of the King is that the pe- 
culiar charm and aroma of the Middle Age he does not 
give in them. There is something magical about it, and 
I will do something with it before I have done. The 
real truth is that Tennyson, with all his temperament and 
artistic skill, is deficient in intellectual power; and no 



462 MATTHEW ARNOLD [^t. 38 

modern poet can make very much of his business unless 
he is pre-eminently strong in this. Goethe owes his 
grandeur to his strength in this, although it even hurt 
his poetical operations by its immense predominance. 
However, it would not do for me to say this about Ten- 
nyson, though gradually I mean to say boldly the truth 
about a great many English celebrities, and begin with 
Ruskin in these lectures on Homer. I have been read- 
ing a great deal in the Iliad again lately, and though it 
is too much to say, as the writer in the Biographie Uni- 
verselle says, that "None but an Englishman would dream 
of matching Shakespeare with the Greeks," yet it is true 
that Homer leaves him with all his unequalled gift — and 
certainly there never was any such naturally gifted poet 
— as far behind as perfection leaves imperfection. 



[^t. 38] 

To HIS Mother 
[the white horse vale; cumnor] 

Oxford, May 14, 1861. 

My dearest Mother, — 

I have to thank you for two letters — a long one, and 
a note returning a letter (of no importance) of a Rus- 
sian count who had been sent with a letter to me. This 
is the first summer, or, indeed, spring day. The wind 
changed in the night, and to-day it is south-west, with 
the lights and airs as they onjy can be with the wind in 
that quarter in May, and spring coming on in its glory 
over all the country. One long, rigid succession of black 
north-east winds we have had, lasting even through the 
rain of Saturday and Sunday. I thought they would 
never end, and was really depressed by them. Even this 
country I am so fond of looked forbidding, and the 
flowers themselves were no pleasure. However, the change 
has come at last. About old May Day (yesterday) they 
say one may always look for fine weather, and the rain, 
ungenial as it was, has wetted the ground and vegeta- 
tion so thoroughly that now the warmth has come there 
is yet no sensation of dryness. I have been at Wantage 
■to-day — King Alfred's birthplace. A wonderful, quiet 



Mt. 38] MATTHEW AKNOLD 463 

old Berkshire town, in the White Horse Vale at the foot 
of the downs. I started by the half-past seven train this 
morning, and then drove four miles from Farringdon 
Road. The Vale is nearly all grass fields, with trees in 
a park-like way about them, and every village quite clus- 
tered round with elms; and the line of the downs bound- 
ing it all has great character, and has always been a 
favourite object with me. Presently I am going to my 
old haunts among the Cumnor hills, and shall come back 
with plenty of orchises and blue-bells. I left Wantage 
at half-past twelve, and am back here by two, having had 
a biscuit and some mulled claret at Didcot. Getting 
back so early is one's reward for getting up early. I am 
wonderfully changed about that, now that without the 
slightest effort I get up at six, and walk down more than 
half a mile to take the early train at half-past seven. It 
is a great thing in my favour (and that advantage I have 
always had) that I am utterly indifferent about the time 
of my breakfast, and can wait for it till such time as it 
pleases Providence to send it me. I always like this 
place, and the intellectual life here is certainly much 
more intense than it used to be; but this has its disad- 
vantages too, in the envies, hatreds, and jealousies that 
come with the activity of mind of most men. Goldwin 
Smith, whose attack on Stanley's Edinburgh article has 
made much noise, is a great element of bitterness and 
strife, though personally a most able, in some respects 
even interesting, man; the result is that all the world 
here seems more perturbed and exacerbated than of old. 
If I was disposed to fly for refuge to the country and 
its sights and sounds against the rather humdrum life 
which prevailed here in old times, how much more am I 
disposed to do this now, convinced as I am that irrita- 
tions and envyings are not only negatively injurious to 
one's spirit, like dulness, but positively and actively. . . . 

Your ever affectionate, 
M. A. 



464 MATTHEW AENOLD [^t. 40 

[^t. 40] 

To HIS Mother 
["though bold, never paradoxical"] 

The Athenaeum, October 13, 1363. 
My dearest Mother, — 

I will write to-day, as I am not sure of to-morrow, but 
I hope that we shall still keep, as far as possible, our old 
days for writing. What a happy time we had at Fox 
How, and what a delightful recollection I have, and shall 
long have, of you with the children, particularly with the 
two dear little girls! Habit reconciles one to everything, 
but I am not yet by any means reconciled to the change 
from our Fox How life to our life here. Breakfast is 
particularly dismal, when I come into the dining-room 
to find nobody, instead of finding you, to look out on the 
whity-brown road and houses of the square, instead of 
looking into Fairfield, and to eat my breakfast without 
hearing any letters read aloud by Fan.. At this time* of 
year I have a particular liking for the country, and the 
weather on Sunday and yesterday was so beautiful that 
it made me quite restless to be off again. To-day it is 
raining, and that composes me a little. I send you a note 
of Lady de Kothschild's, which you may burn. The 
W estminster article she was the first to tell me of. I 
must send it you. It is a contrast (all in my favour) of 
me with Ruskin. It is the strongest pronunciamento on 
my side there has yet been; almost too strong for my 
liking, as it may provoke a feeling against me. The re- 
viewer says, "Though confident, Mr. Arnold is never self- 
willed; though bold, he is never paradoxical." Tell Fan 
to remember this in future when she plays croquet with 
me. I also keep it as a weapon against K., who said to 
me that I was becoming as dogmatic as Ruskin. I told 
her the difference was that Ruskin was "dogmatic and 
wrong," and here is this charming reviewer who comes to 
confirm me. 

My love to dear Fan, and thanks for her note; love too 
to dear old Susy. — Your ever most affectionate 

M. A. 



JEt. 41] MATTHEW AENOLD 465 

[^t. 41] 

To HIS Mother 
["but of this inward spring one must not talk"] 

The Athen^um, London, 
December 24, 1863. 
My dearest Mother, — 

Business first. I am delighted with the wooden plat- 
ter and bread knife, for which articles I have long had 
a fancy ; the platter too I like all the better for not having 
an inscription, only a border of corn ears. Dear Row- 
land's book has not yet come. Thank her for it all the 
same, and tell her I will write to her when I receive it. 
And thank dear K. for her letter, and dear Fan for her 
note, and receive all my thanks for your own, my dearest 
mother. 

While writing these last words I have heard the start- 
ling news of the sudden death of Thackeray. He was 
found dead in his bed this morning. If you have not 
seen it in the newspapers before you read this, you will 
all be greatly startled and shocked, as I am. I have heard 
no particulars. I cannot say that I thoroughly liked him, 
though we were on friendly terms; and he is not, to my 
thinking, a great writer. Still, this sudden cessation of 
an existence so lately before one's eyes, so vigorous and 
full of life, and so considerable a power in the country, 
is very sobering, if, indeed, after the shock of a fort- 
night ago, one still needs sobering. To-day I am forty- 
one, the middle of life, in any case, and for me, perhaps, 
much more than the middle. I have ripened, and am 
ripening so slowly, that I shall be glad of as much time 
as possible, yet I can feel, I rejoice to say, an inward 
spring which seems more and more to gain strength, and 
to promise to resist outward shocks, if they must come, 
however rough. But of this inward spring one must not 
talk, for it does not like being talked about, and threat- 
ens to depart if one will no"^ leave it in mystery. . . . 

My love to all at Fox How on Christmas Day. 

Your ever most affectionate 
M. A. 



466 MATTHEW ARNOLD [^t. 60 

[^t. 60] 

To Miss Arnold 

[impressions of AMERICA] 

The St. Botolph Club, 
85 BoYLSTON Street, Boston, 
November 8, 1883. 
My dearest Fan, — 

Here is Thursday, and my Sunday letter has not yet 
been written; but you have heard from Flu, and she will 
have given you some notion of what our life here is. I 
hope, however, to write once in every week to you. I 
wrote last from New York, before my first lecture. I was 
badly heard, and many people were much disappointed; 
but they remained to the end, were perfectly civil and 
attentive, and applauded me when I had done. It made 
me doubtful about going on with the lecturing, however, 
as I felt I could not maintain a louder pitch of voice 
than I did in Chickering Hall, where I lectured, and 
some of the American Halls are much larger. There is 
a good deal to be learned as to the management of the 
voice, however, and I have set myself to learn it, though 
I am old to begin; the kindness of the people here makes 
everything easier, as they are determined to like one. The 
strength of the feeling about papa, here in New England 
especially, would gratify you; and they have been dili- 
gent readers of my books for years. The number of peo- 
ple whom, somehow or other, I reach here is what sur- 
prises me. Imagine General Grant calling at the Trihune 
Office to thank them for their good report of the main 
points of my lecture, as he had thought the line taken so 
very important, but had heard imperfectly 1 Now I should 
not have suspected Grant of either knowing or caring 
anything whatever about me and my productions. Last 
night I gave my New York lecture here. The hall was 
crammed, but it only holds 900, where the New York hall 
holds 1300; I had refused to try a bigger hall here. I was 
introduced by Dr. Oliver W. Holmes, a dear little old 
man. and perfectly heard. I spoke much better than at 
New York, and shall improve still further, I hope. 
Holmes told me he could not have believed such an audi- 
ence could have been gathered for a lecture in the heat 
of their election of a Governor for the State of Massa- 



.^t. 60] MATTHEW ARNOLD 467 

chusetts; and he said also that he had never seen such 
attention and interest. We went from New York to Mr. 
Charles Butler at Fox Meadow — a beautiful old charac- 
ter with a delightful daughter. Lyulph Stanley sent us 
to him. From him we went to the Delanos, 90 miles up 
the Hudson. She was a Miss Astor, and it was like stay- 
ing with the Rothschilds. All along the Hudson it is 
like the rich and finished villas along the Thames by 
Richmond. We came here on Monday night. Next week 
we shall be paying visits, but we shall be on and off here 
for a month to come. Imagine my getting a cordial let- 
ter from Louis Claude, entreating me "as an old Amble- 
side boy" to come and visit him somewhere out on the 
way to St. Paul. I have also heard from a Mr. New- 
berry, son of an old Laleham pupil of whom you have 
heard mamma speak; he remembers me as a little child, 
and wants to come and see me. I have scores of inter- 
esting things of this kind to tell you, but must stop now. 
We dine to-night with Norton at Cambridge; on Satur- 
day we go to Newport. — Your ever affectionate 

M. A. 

[.Et. 60] 

To Miss Arnold 
[emerson ; amherst] 

Somerset Club, Boston, 
Saturday, December 8, 1883. 
My dearest Fan, — 

I do not think I have yet let a week pass, from Sunday 
to Sunday, without writing to you, and I will not do so 
now, for in your last letter of 20th November you com- 
plained of having been long without a letter. This was 
owing to the bad passages the ships have been making. 
I am driven hard as usual. Yesterday I left Flu with 
the Pages here, the Wordsworths' friends, and took the 
eleven o'clock train to Amherst, a hundred and twenty 
jniles from Boston, and the seat of a university. In the 
train Jane's letter and a charming note from Miss Emer- 
son were brought to me. Miss Emerson wrote to say 
that she found not a word in the lecture on her father 
to give her pain. However, I am not going to read that 
lecture at Concord — it is too much of a literary criticism. 



468 MATTHEW AKNOLD [^t. 60 

Many here object to my not having praised Emerson all 
round, but that was impossible. I have given him praise 
which in England will be thought excessive, probably; 
but then I have a very, very deep feeling for him. One 
hears so much of him here, and what one hears is so ex- 
cellent, that Flu and Lucy, who really know nothing 
about him, have become quite attached to him. Well, I 
was saying that I went to Amherst yesterday. I got there 
about three. It is a pretty village near the Connecticut 
Kiver, with picturesque lines of hill in the landscape. I 
found the President of the University, with whom I 
stayed, had dined at twelve, thinking I should dine "on 
board" the train, as they say here. However, I said a 
lunch of bread and butter and tea would do perfectly for 
me, and then we went a walk into the country, and at 
six we sat down to tea — the President (who is a widower), 
his three daughters, and a favourite student, who per- 
haps is going to marry one of the daughters. At tea we 
had exquisite rolls, broiled oysters, and preserved peaches 
— nothing else — and iced water or tea to wash it down. 
For once, this suits me perfectly well. I had a great din- 
ner with Phillips Brooks — venison and champagne — the 
day before. Then we walked up to the chapel where the 
lecture was. We had 650 people, the place quite full, and 
I spoke well. Then we walked back, and had a supper of 
apples and pears (excellent), sponge cakes and chocolate. 
I went to bed soon after ten, for at half-past five I had 
to get up to catch a train at a quarter to seven. The 
daughters like early rising, and all breakfasted with me. 
A porridge made of split oat groats, which I am begin- 
ning to like (one takes it with cream), a roll, and a cup 
of tea did for me very well. There was an immense beef 
steak, but that was too much for me so early. Since I 
got here I have been shaved, had my letters, seen my 
agents, and am now going to the Pages to pick up Flu. 
We go down to Haverhill for Sunday — an exquisite place, 
belonging to a man called Sanders, who has made a great 
fortune by the telephone. I had been there before, and 
they wanted me to bring Flu. She will be very comforta- 
ble, and they will drive us after church to-morrow to see 
what Washington pronounced the most beautiful view in 
New England. Your ever aifectionate 

M. A. 



[.Et. 46] THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

1825-1895 
To John Tyndall 

[a visit to VESUVIUS] 

Hotel de Grande Bretagne, Naples, 
March 31, 1872. 
My dear Tyndall, — 

Your very welcome letter did not reach me until the 
18th of March, when I returned to Cairo from my ex- 
pedition to Assouan. Like Johnny Gilpin, I 'iittle 
thoug-ht, when I set out, of running: such a rig"; but 
while at Cairo I fell in with Ossory of the Athenaeum, 
and a very pleasant fellow, Charles Ellis, who had taken 
a dahabieh, and were about to start up the Nile. They 
invited me to take possession of a vacant third cabin, and 
I accepted their hospitality, with the intention of going 
as far as Thebes and returning on my own hook. But 
when we got to Thebes I found there was no getting away 
again without much more exposure and fatigue than I 
felt justified in facing just then, and as my friends showed 
no disposition to be rid of me, I stuck to the boat, and 
only left them on the return voyage at Rodu, which is 
the terminus of the railway, about 150 miles from Cairo. 

We had an unusually quick journey, as I was little 
more than a month away from Cairo, and as my com- 
panions made themselves very agreeable, it was very 
pleasant. I was not particularly well at first, but by de- 
grees the utter rest of this "always afternoon" sort of life 
did its work, and I am as well and vigorous now as ever 
I was in my life. . . . 

Egypt interested me profoundly, but I must reserve the 
tale of all I did and saw^ there for word of mouth. From 
Alexandria I w^ent to Messina, and thence made an ex- 
cursion along the lovely Sicilian coast to Catania and 
Etna. The old giant was half covered with snow, and 
this fact, which would have tempted you to go to the top, 
stopped me. But I went to the Val del Bove, whence all 
the great lava streams have flowed for the last two cen- 

469 



470 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY [^t. 46 

turies, and feasted my eyes with its rugged grandeur. 
From Messina I came on here, and had the great good 
fortune to find Vesuvius in eruption. Before this fact 
the vision of good Bence Jones forbidding much exertion 
vanished into thin air, and on Thursday up I went in 
company with Ray Lankester and my friend Dohrn's 
father, Dohrn himself being unluckily away. We had a 
glorious day, and did not descend till late at night. The 
great crater was not very active, and contented itself with 
throwing out great clouds of steam and volleys of red- 
hot stones now and then. These were thrown towards 
the south-west side of the cone, so that it was practicable 
to walk all round the northern and eastern lip, and look 
down into the Hell Gate. I wished you were there to 
enjoy the sight as much as I did. No lava was issuing 
from the great crater, but on the north side of this, a 
little way below the top, an independent cone had estab- 
lished itself as the most charming little pocket-volcano 
imaginable. It could not have been more than 100 feet 
high, and at the top was a crater not more than six or 
seven feet across. Out of this, with a noise exactly re- 
sembling a blast furnace and a slowly-working high pres- 
sure steam engine combined, issued a violent torrent of 
steam and fragments of semi-fluid lava as big as one's 
fist, and sometimes bigger. These shot up sometimes as 
much as 100 feet, and then fell down on the sides of the 
little crater, which could be approached within fifty feet 
without any danger. As darkness set in, the spectacle 
was most strange. The fiery stream found a lurid reflec- 
tion in the slowly-drifting steam cloud, which overhung 
it, while the red-hot stones which shot through the cloud 
shone strangely beside the quiet stars in a moonless 
sky. . . . 

Courage, my friend, behold land ! I know you love my 
handwriting. I am off to Rome to-day, and this day- 
week, if all goes well, I shall be under my own roof-tree 
again. In fact I hope to reach London on Saturday even- 
ing. It will be jolly to see your face again. — Ever yours 
faithfully, 

T. H. Huxley. 



[Mt 34] FITZ-JAMES O'BRIEN 

1828-18.62 

To A Friend 

[from a soldier's death-bed] 

[April, 1862] 
... I gave up the ghost and told him to go ahead. 
There were about twelve surgeons to witness the opera- 
tion. All my shoulder bone and a portion of my upper 
arm have been taken away. I nearly died. My breath 
ceased, heart ceased to beat, pulse stopped. However, I 
got through. I am not yet out of danger from the opera- 
tion, but a worse disease has set in. I have got tetanus, 
or lock-jaw. There is a chance of my getting out of it, 
that's all. In case I don't, good-by old fellow, with all 
my love! I don't want to make any legal document, but 
I desire that you and Frank Wood should be my literary 
executors, because after I'm dead I may turn out a bigger 
man than when living. I'd write more if I could, but I'm 
very weak. Write to me. I may be alive. Also get Wood 
to write. 



[^t. 41] DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 

1828-1882 

To WiLLUM RoSSETTI 

["recovering my lost mss."] 

13 October, 1869. 
My dear William, — 

I wished last night to speak to you on a subject which 
however I find it necessary to put in writing. I am very 
anxious to know your view of it, and to remind you be- 
forehand that no mistrust or unbrotherly feeling could 
possibly have caused my silence till now. 

Various friends have long hinted from time to time at 
the possibility of recovering my lost MSS,, and when I 
was in Scotland last year Scott particularly referred to 
it. Some months ago Howell of his own accord entered 
on the matter, and offered to take all the execution of it 
on himself. This for some time I still hung back from 

471 



472 DANTE GABEIEL ROSSETTI [^t. 44 

accepting; but eventually I yielded, and the thing was 
done, after. some obstacles, on Wednesday or Thursday 
last, I forget which. An order had first to be obtained 
from the Home Secretary, who strangely enough is an 
old and rather intimate acquaintance of my own — H. A. 
Bruce. . . . All in the coffin was found quite perfect; 
but the book, though not in any way destroyed, is soaked 
through and through, and had to be still further saturated 
with disinfectants. It is now in the hands of the medi- 
cal man who was associated with Howell in the disinter- 
ment, and who is carefully drying it leaf by leaf. There 
seems reason to fear that some minor portion is obliter- 
ated, but I most hope this may not prove to be the most 
important part. I shall not, I believe, be able to see it 
for at least a week yet. 

I trust you will not — but I know you cannot — think 
that I showed any want of confidence in not breaking 
this painful matter to you before its issue. It was a 
service I could not ask you to perform for me, nor do I 
know any one except Howell who could well have been 
entrusted with such a trying task. It was necessary, as 
we found, that a lawyer should be employed in the mat- 
ter, to speak to the real nature of the *MSS., as difficulties 
were raised to the last by the Cemetery Authorities as to 
their possibly being papers the removal of which involved 
a fraud. . . . 

[^t. 44] 

To HIS Mother 
[disciplining a dog] 

Kelmscott, Lechlade, 
27 March, 1873. 
My dearest Mother, — 

I hear with great anxiety from Maria that you have 
been suffering from an attack of influenza, and that you 
are still in bed. I hope Maria will continue to let me 
know regularly how you are. I trust, however, that the 
next news may be decidedly favourable. . . . 

I am meaning to dedicate to you the new edition of 
my Italian Poets. The first was dedicated to poor Lizzy, 
and I had some thought of retaining the dedication with 



^t. 44] DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 473 

date; but, this seeming perhaps rather forced, I shall 
substitute your dear name in the second edition. 
Hoping to hear a better account soon, 
I am ever 

Your most loving Son, 
D. Gabriel R. 

P.S. — I must really tell you about Dizzy, George's dog. 
Some evenings back he was lying by the fire in my studio, 
when George, who was going to bed, roused him to ac- 
company him, as he generally does. Dizzy, however, was 
unwilling to quit the fire, and at last got so nasty and 
wicked that he bit George in the thumb. He was then 
locked up for the night in the coldest place that could 
be found. 

In the morning he trotted into the breakfast-room as 
usual, but was received with shouts of obloquy, upon 
which he turned tail at once and fled. At dinner the 
same day he reappeared; whereupon we tied him to the 
leg of the piano, and had in another dog who is here, 
called Turvy. We set a plate just out of Dizzy's reach, 
and fed Turvy with three successive helps of beef and 
macaroni, between each of which Dizzy's feelings found" 
vent in "voci alte e fioche." After this Turvy was much 
caressed, and every now and then left us, to walk 
leisurely round Dizzy and survey him as an accessory de- 
serving of passing notice. Dizzy has been a convict ever 
since, and knows it. This morning, on entering the break- 
fast-room, I found him rolled up on the mat before the 
fire, and, being occupied with other things, for the mo- 
ment forgot his position. On my appearance, he raised 
his head in doubt, but, when I sat down and said noth- 
ing, he let his head drop again on the mat with an air 
of luxurious relief. This served as a reminder, and I 
shrieked, ''What, not Dizzy!" in such tones that he arose 
in a moment and fled to the shades with an expression 
of anguish which cannot be described. I think the ban 
will soon have to be taken off him now. At present the 
only relaxation is that he is allowed to accompany us in 
our walks, but without recognition from us. One only 
has to show one's thumb to him, and his sins fall back on 
his head in a moment, and drive him into solitude. 



[^t. 34] GEOEGE MEREDITH 

1828-1909 
To William Hardman 
["tuck" disappoints] 

May 2, 1862. 
Such Weather. 
And at Copsham no Tuck! 

Anathema ! 
Spoken by the poet on receiving 

Tuck's 
Card: May 2nd, 1862. 

"May his company find him utterly dull, and he his 
company ! 

"May he hear good things and not comprehend them ! 
"May he long in anguish to laugh, and when the laugh 
comes, may he forget the cause thereof, and go seeking 
for it, for the remainder of his years, with the aspect of 
such a seeker! 

"May Demitro'ia exclaim, T am of a different opinion 
from William' ! ! !" 

(Climax attained.) 
(Close of Anathema.) 
Went to Exhibition on opening Day with Borthwick. 
Crush. Saw everything. . . . Dined with Morison and 
Hicks, and drank Hocks, etc. Anticipated seeing you, 
cock-certain, to-morrow. Will never believe your cock- 
certain again! — Book* to be delivered this evening or to- 
morrow. Has Subscribed wonderfully well. In spite of 



all. — Your loving 



George M. 



Poems and Ballads. 



474 



^Et. 34 GEORGE MEREDITH 475 

[^t. 34] 

To William Hardman 

[^'asparagus is ripe"] 

CoPSHAM, May 5, 1862. 
Madrigal 
"Since Tuck is faithless found" 

Since Tuck is faithless found, no more 
I'll trust to man or maid; 
I'll sit me down, a hermit hoar, 
Alone in Copsham shade. 

The sight of all I shun; 
Far-spying from the mound; 
I'll be at home no more, 

Since Tuck, 

Since Tu-a tu-a tu-a 

Tuia Tuck, 
Since Tuck is faithless found. 

Oh! what a glorious day. I have done lots of Emilia,* 
and am now off to Ripley, or St. Demitroia hill, or Tuck's 
Height, carolling. I snap my fingers at you. And yet, 
dear Tuck, what would I give to have you here. The 
gorse is all ablaze, the meadows are glorious — green, hum- 
ming all day. Nightingales throng. Heaven, blessed 
blue amorous Heaven is hard at work upon our fair, wan- 
ton, darling old naughty Mother Earth. 

Come, dear Tuck, and quickly, or I must love a woman, 
and be ruined. Answer me, grievous man! 

In thine ear! — Asparagus is ripe at Ripley. In haste. 
— Your constantly loving friend, George M. 

* Emilia in England, now called Sandra Belloni. 



476 GEORGE MEREDITH [^t. 36 

[^t. 36] 

To THE Rev. Augustus Jessopp 
["little writers should be realistic"] 

Sept. 20, 1864. 
My dear Jessopp, — 

As to the Poems: I don't think the age prosaic for not 
buying them. A man who hopes to be popular, must 
think from the mass, and as the heart of the mass. If he 
follows out vagaries of his own brain, he cannot hope for 
general esteem; and he does smaller work. "Modern 
Love" as a dissection of the sentimental passion of these 
days, could only be apprehended by the few who would 
read it many times. I have not looked for it to succeed. 
Why did I write it ? — Who can account for pressure ? . . . 

Between realism and idealism there is no natural con- 
flict. This completes that. Realism is the basis of good 
composition: it implies study, observation, artistic power, 
and (in those who can do more) humility. Little writers 
should be realistic. They would then at least do solid 
work. They afflict the world because they will attempt 
that it is given to none but noble workmen to achieve. A 
great genius must necessarily employ ideal means, for a 
vast conception cannot be placed bodily before the eye, 
and remains to be suggested. Idealism is as an atmos- 
phere whose effects of grandeur are wrought out through 
a series of illusions, that are illusions to the sense within 
us only when divorced from the groundwork of the real. 
Need there be exclusion, the one of the other? The artist 
is incomplete who does this. Men to whom I bow my 
head (Shakespeare, Goethe; and in their way, Moliere, 
Cervantes) are Realists au fond. But they have the broad 
arms of Idealism at command. They give us Earth; but 
it is earth with an atmosphere. One may find as much 
amusement in a Kaleidoscope as in a merely idealistic 
writer: and, just as sound prose is of more worth than 
pretentious poetry, I hold the man who gives a plain wall 
of fact higher in esteem than one who is constantly shuf- 
fling the clouds and dealing with airy, delicate sentimen- 
talities, headless and tailless imaginings, despising our 
good, plain strength. 

Does not all science (the mammoth balloon, to wit) tell 



^t. 36] GEORGE MEREDITH 4Y7 

us that when we forsake earth, we reach up to a frosty, 
inimical Inane? For my part I love and cling to earth, 
as the one piece of God's handiwork which we possess. I 
admit that we can refashion; but of earth must be the 
material. — Yours faithful, 

George Meredith. 

[^t. 36] 

To Miss J H 

[rejecting a novel] 
193 Piccadilly, London, W., Nov. 22, 1864. 
The chief fault in your stories is the redundancy of 
words which overlays them; and the chief hope visible 
in them is the copious youthful feeling running through- 
out. Your characters do not speak the language of na- 
ture, and this is specially to be charged against them 
when they are under strong excitement and should most 
do so. Nor are the characters very originally conceived, 
though there is good matter in the Old Welshman C. 
Rees. Your defect at present lies in your raw feeling. 
Time will cure this, if you will get the habit of looking 
resolutely at the thing you would pourtray, instead of 
exclaiming about it and repeating yourself without as- 
sisting the reader on in any degree. We* certainly think 
that you are a hopeful writer, and possibly we have been 
enough outspoken to encourage you to believe us sincere 
in saying so. 

To Miss J H 



["learn to destroy remorselessly"] 

193 Piccadilly, London, W. 
Madam, — 

You speak of the exclamatory style as being, you think, 
essentially and naturally feminine. If you will look at 
the works of the writer of "Adam Bede," ycJu will see 
that she, the greatest of female writers, manifests noth- 
ing of the sort. It is simply a quality of youth, and you 
by undertaking to study will soon tame your style. Intel* 

* Meredith was for several years literary adviser to Chapman and Hall. 



478 GEOKGE MEKEDITH [.Et. 44 

jections are commonly a sign of raw thought, and of 
vagrant emotion: — a literary hysteria to which women 
may be more subject than men; but they can talk in an- 
other tongue, let us hope. We are anxious that you 
should not be chagrined by any remarks that we have 
made. There is real promise in your work : but remem- 
ber that the best fiction is fruit of a well-trained mind. 
If hard study should kill your creative effort, it will be 
no loss to the world or to you. And if, on the contrary 
the genius you possess should survive the process of men- 
tal labour, it will be enriched and worthy of a good rank. 
But do not be discouraged by what we say; and do not 
listen to the encomiums of friends. Read the English of 
the Essayists; read de Stendhal (Henri Beyle) in French; 
Heinrich Zschokke in German (minor tales). Learn to 
destroy your literary offspring remorselessly until you 
produce one that satisfies your artistic feeling. 



[^t. 44] 

To Arthur G. Meredith 
["let nothing flout your sense of a supreme being"] 

Box Hill. Dorking, Surrey, 
England, April 25, 1872. 
My dear Arthur, — 

. . . Strong friendships and intercommunications with 
foreigners will refresh your life in this island, and the 
Germans are solid. Stick to a people not at the mercy 
of their impulses, and besides a people with so fine a 
literature must be worthy of love. — Captain Maxse wrote 
to me the other day about an examination in the Foreign 
Office for the post of Chinese interpreter — for you : if 
successful to go out to China with a salary of £200 per 
annum and learn the Chinese tongue of li-ro and fo-ki. 
I declined it: I hope I was right. I felt sure that it 
would be repugnant to you to spend your life in China, 
where the climate is hard, society horrid, life scarcely (to 
my thought) endurable. Perhaps you might have chosen 
Japan. But it would have been for very many years 
perpetual banishment. Let me hear what you think of 
it. — Study Cicero carefully. He is a fine moralist, a 



^t. 44] GEORGE MEREDITH 479 

friend of scholars, a splendid trainer for a public life of 
any serious and exalted ambition. — What you say of our 
religion is what thoughtful men feel: and that you at 
the same time can recognise its moral value, is matter of 
rejoicing to me. The Christian teaching is sound and 
good: the ecclesiastical dogma is an instance of the pov- 
erty of humanity's mind hitherto, and has often in its 
hideous fangs and claws shown whence we draw our de- 
scent. — Don't think that the obscenities mentioned in the 
Bible do harm to children. The Bible is outspoken upon 
facts, and rightly. It is because the world is pruriently 
and stupidly shamefaced that it cannot come in contact 
with the Bible without convulsions. I agree with the 
Frommen that the book should be read out, for Society 
is a wanton hypocrite, and I would accommodate her in 
nothing: though for the principle of Society I hold that 
men should be ready to lay down their lives. Belief in 
the religion has done and does this good to the young; 
it floats them through the perilous sensual period when 
the animal appetites most need control and transmuta- 
tion. If you have not the belief, set j^ourself to love vir- 
tue by understanding that it is your best guide both as 
to what is due to others and what is for your positive 
personal good. If your mind honestly rejects it, you must 
call on your mind to supply its place from your own re- 
sources. Otherwise you will have only half done your 
work, and that is always mischievous. Pray attend to my 
words on this subject. You know how Socrates loved 
Truth. Virtue and Truth are one. Look for the truth 
in everything, and follow it, and you will then be living 
justly before God. Let nothing flout your sense of a Su- 
preme Being, and be certain that your understanding 
wavers whenever you chance to doubt that he leads to 
good. We grow to good as surely as the plant grows to 
the light. The school has only to look through history 
for a scientific assurance of it. And do not lose the habit 
of praying to the unseen Divinity. Prayer for worldly 
goods is worse than fruitless, but prayer for strength of 
soul is that passion of the soul which catches the gift it 
seeks — Your loving father, 

George Meredith. 



480 GEORGE MEREDITH [^t. 46 

[^t. 46] 

To Captain Maxse 
[a parson-pigeon] 

Box Hill, August 15, 1874. 
My dear Fred, — 

I write so that you may not be disappointed of a letter 
at Meyringen, and good morning to you on your way to 
the Bel Alp! I am finishing a poem, "The Nuptials of 
Attila" — about forty pages: Jacob at my foot, an accus- 
tomed pigeon on the window-sill, bees below humming 
over some droppings of honeycomb just taken from them. 
This is pastoral and should content me, yet I wish I were 
with you, in sight of the Alps. Ziirich I don't much care 
for, yet to be at Ziirich would enrapture me. — Why should 
you return! — Now I look at my pigeon fronting me, I 
remark that he is amazingly like a parson. He is on one 
leg, asleep, his beak in breast, all his feathers oddly ruf- 
fled to swell his size, and an eye turned on me like the 
eye of Falstaif heeling over with excess of Sherris. Say, 
a Bishop. — When I was staying with my wife's sister last 
June we dined one evening with the rector of the place. 
He said to me: "Do you think it true that there is a por- 
trait of Jesus Christ extant?"— "Of Nazareth?" said I. 
He blinked faintly like my sleepy pigeon. "Certainly of 
Nazareth."— "Oh ! no, then," said I. "But it is affirmed 
tlxat there is an authentic portrait, of the Virgin his 
Mother." "Could one trust it?" he asked me with a sup- 
plication in the tone. "Decidedly not," said I. He was 
(to make use of one of their distinctions) High Church. 
One may be high and not see far. And now good-night, 
Fred. Write from Bel Alp. — Where you will also be high 
and not see so far as me, I dare say. — Your envious 

George M. 



^t. 50] GEOKGE MEREDITH 481 

[^t. 50] 

To R. L. Stevenson 
[praise and blame; henley] 

Box Hill, Dorking, June 4, 1878. 
My dear Stevenson, — 

I had not time to write to you immediately after read- 
ing the book,* but my impressions are fresh. My wife 
has gained possession of it at last, so I should have to 
run down to the house to quote correctly. She fell on 
the book, I snatched it, she did the same, but I regaining 
it, cut the pages, constituting an act of ownership. I 
leave this to her invariably, so she was impressed and 
abandoned the conflict. I have been fully pleased. The 
writing is of the rare kind which is naturally simple yet 
picked and choice. It is literature. The eye on land and 
people embraces both, and does not take them up in bits. 
I have returned to the reading and shall again. The re- 
flections wisely tickle, they are in the right good tone of 
philosophy interwrought with humour. 

My protest is against the Preface and the final page. 
The Preface is keenly in Osric's vein — "everything you 
will, dear worthy public, but we are exceeding modest 
and doubt an you will read us, though exquisitely silken- 
calved we are, and could say a word of ourselves, yet on 
seeing our book, were we amazed at our littleness, indeed 
and truly, my lord Public!" As for the closing page, it 
is rank recreancy. "Yes, Mr. Barlow," said Tommy, "I 
have travelled abroad, under various mishaps, to learn in 
the end that the rarest adventures are those one does not 
go forth to seek." "My very words to him,'^ said Mr. 
Barlow to himself, at the same time presenting Tommy 
with a guinea piece. — This last page is quite out of tone 
with the spirit of the book. 

I remember [in] "On the Oise," you speak of the river 
hurrying on, "never pausing to take breath." This, and a 
touch of excess in dealing with the reeds, whom you de- 
prive of their beauty by overinforming them with your 
sensations, I feel painfully to be levelled at the Saxon 
head. It is in the style of Dickens. 

* An Inland Voyage. 



482 GEOKGE MEREDITH [^t. 54 

But see what an impression I have of you when these 
are the sole blots I discover by my lively sensations in the 
perusal. 

Should you be in communication with Mr. Henley, I 
beg you will convey to him my sense of the honour he 
does me by giving so much attention to my work, I, who 
have worked for many years not supposing that any one 
paid much heed to me, find it extraordinary. His praise 
is high indeed, but happily he fetches me a good lusty 
clout o' the head now and again, by which I am sur- 
prisingly well braced and my balance is restored. Other- 
wise praise like that might operate as the strong waters 
do upon the lonely savage unused to such a rapture. 

You should see the foliage of our valley. Come you 
to London on your way to the Continent, you must give 
us a visit. Whither do you go? How is the mood for 
work with you? In August I believe I am bound for 
Dauphine, where a French brother-in-law of my wife, a 
militaire, has a pied a terre on the borders of Savoy. I 
am rather more in the mood for South Tyrol, but the in- 
vitation attracts, and Dauphine has heights enough. My 
"Egoist" is on the way to a conclusion. Of pot-boilers 
let none speak. Jove hangs them upon necks that could 
soar above his heights but for the accursed weight. 

Adieu. I trust you are well. Look to health. Run to 
no excess in writing or in anything. I hope you will feel 
that we expect much of you. I beg you to remember me 
to your father and mother. — Yours very faithfully, 

George Meredith. 

[^t. 54] 

To M. AxDRE Raffalovich 

[LESLIE STEPHEN AND "tHE SUNDAY TRAMPS"] 

Box Hill, Dorking, April 8, 1882. 
My dear Sir, — 

I have been unable to write much. All my correspond- 
ence lies in abeyance. A friend would persuade me to go 
with him to Evian on the Lake of Geneva in August, and 
I may try the place for a few weeks, if I can put a finish 
to my present work. It is doubtful. 

Your article on Louis Stevenson is a fair summary of 



.Et. 54] GEORGE MEREDITH 483 

him. Leslie Stephen comes down to me three or four 
times in the year, with other friends forming a^body call- 
ing themselves ''The Sunday Tramps," who escape from 
the dreary London Sabbath once a fortnight and take a 
walk of between 20 and 30 miles. When I was in health 
I was of the pedestrian party. Now I have to meet them 
on the hills half way from home, or less. They dine with 
me, and start for London at 10 P.M. They are men of 
distinction in science or Literature; tramping with them 
one has the world under review, as well as pretty scenery. 
Leslie is acknowledged captain of the band. I have a 
very warm regard for him. If you remember Vernon 
Whitford of the ''Egoist," it is a sketch of L. Stephen, 
but merely a sketch, not doing him full justice, though 
the strokes within and without are correct. — I have just 
put down "Numa Roumestan," an admirable piece of 
writing. The pictures of Provence, and the men and 
women of Southern blood, are astonishingly vivid. I like 
no other of Daudet's novels. His "Contes Choisis" are 
exquisite. He has real poetical quality. — Now I must 
come to ^ end. 

Believe me, your most faithful 
George Meredith. 

[.Et. 54] 

To M. AxPRK Raffalovtch 

[CARLYLE AND HIS WIFE; STEVENSON'] 

Box Hill. Dorking, 
May 23, 1882. 
My dear Sir, — 

Your article on Th. Carlyle's "Reminiscences" was 
prompted, I think, rather by enthusiasm for the lady who 
stands close and in contrast with him, than by an ac- 
curate knowledge of his works, nature, and teaching. 
Our people over here have been equally unjust, with less 
excuse. You speak of vanity, as a charge against him. 
He has little, though he certainly does not err on the side 
of modesty: — he knew his powers. The harsh judgment 
he passed on the greater number of his contemporaries 
came from a very accurate perception of them, as they 
were perused by the intense light of the man's personal 



484 GEOKGE MEREDITH [^t. 54 

sincereness. He was one who stood constantly in the 
presence of those "Eternal verities" of which he speaks. 
For the shallow men of mere literary aptitude he had 
perforce contempt. The spirit of the prophet was in him. 
— Between him and his wife the case is quite simple. 
She was a woman of peculiar conversational sprightli- 
ness, and such a woman longs for society. To him, bear- 
ing that fire of sincereness, as I have said, society was 
unendurable. All coming near him, except those who 
could bear the trial, were scorched, and he was as much 
hurt as they by the action rousing the flames in him. 
Moreover, like all truthful souls, he was an artist in his 
work. The efforts after verification of matters of fact, 
and to present things distinctly in language, were in- 
cessant; they cost him his health, swallowed up his leisure. 
Such a man could hardly be an agreeable husband for a 
woman of the liveliest vivacity. But that is not a reason 
for your passing condemnation on him. Study well his 
writings. I knew them both. She did me the honour to 
read my books, and make him listen to extracts, and he 
was good enough to repeat that "the writer thereof was 
no fool" — high praise from him. They snapped at one 
another, and yet the basis of affection was mutually firm. 
She admired, he respected, and each knew the other to 
be honest. Only she needed for her mate one who was 
more a citizen of the world, and a woman of the placid 
disposition of Milton's Eve, framed by her master to be 
an honest labourer's cook and housekeeper, with a nerv- 
ous system resembling a dumpling, would have been 
enough for him. — He was the greatest of the Britons of 
his time — and after the British fashion of not coming 
near perfection; Titanic, not Olympian: a heaver of 
rocks, not a shaper. But if he did no perfect work, he 
had JSghtning's power to strike out marvellous pictures 
and reach to the inmost of men with a phrase. 

We had Mr. Louis Stevenson in our Valley, staying 
with his wife and father and mother at the inn. He 
dined with me several evenings, and talked of you. We 
speculated on the impression produced by his costume de 
Boheme, which he seems to have adopted for good — an 
innocent eccentricity at any rate. 

My thanks are due to you for your articles on my works. 



.Et.60] GEORGE MEREDITH 485 

Pardon me if I do not correspond regularly. I am 
compelled to shun writing as much as possible, and 
scarcely hope to be of much in the world until 1 have 
gone through some course of water-cure for unstrung- 
nerves. They tell me that good douches are to be had 
at Evian, and I rather decide to go thither at the end of 
July, thence perhaps to the Engadine or the South Tyrol 
Dolomites, if my ancient talent for walking should be 
restored. You, who have youth, take my warning not to 
undermine it with the pick and blasting powder of pen 
and ink. — I am, with warmest greetings to you, your 
most faithful and obliged, 

George Meredith. 

[.Et. GO] 

To W. E. Henley * 
["in hospital"] 

Box Hill, Dorking, June 1, 1888. 
Dear Mr. Henley, — 

The rude realism of your verses 'Tn Hospital" has 
braced me. Aiid with this breath of the darkness of life 
you give a note — 

"Out of tho night tluit covors mo" — 

wliieh has a manful ring to clear and lift us, whatever 
the oppression that may have been caused. No realism 
frightens me. At its worst, I take it as a correction of 
the flimsy, to which our literature has a constant tendency 
to recur. Even the lowest appears to me more instructive 
than Byronics. — But when, out of hospital, you cry out 
in ecstasy of the "smell of the mud in the nostrils," you 
strike profoundly — beyond the critical senses. 

I thank you for the volume. It has the tone of a voice 
in the ear — as near to life as that. You have not aimed 
at higher. Do so in your next effort. Meanwhile the 
present is a distinct achievement, beyond the powers of 
most. — Yours very truly, 

George Meredith. 

* For Stevenson's account of Henley "in hospital," see p. 503. 



486 GEORGE MEREDITH [^t. 74 

[^t. 64] 

To Mrs. Bovill 

["the shaving of shagpat"] 

Box HiLL^ Dorking^ August 16, 1892. 

My dear Mrs. Bovill, — 

Wonderful to hear that there is a woman who can read 
of Shagpat! I suppose he does wear a sort of allegory. 
But it is not as a dress-suit; rather as a dressing-gown, 
very loosely. And they say it signifies Humbug, and its 
attractiveness; while Noorna is the spiritual truth. Poor 
Sh. Bagarag being the ball between the two. I think I 
once knew more about them and the meaning, but have 
forgotten, and am glad to forget, seeing how abused I 
have been for having written the book. 

I was pleased to have your letter, and shall rejoice 
when it is my good chance to meet you again. — Your ever 
faithful 

George Meredith. 

[.Et. 74] 

To Lady Ulrica Duxcombe 
[a "weight of apprehension"; "diana"] 

Box Hill, Dorking, Autumn, 1902. 
. . . Haldane, staying with Riette for a couple of days, 
came here on Sunday, and pleased me by talking of (one) 
whom he appreciates, backing her in all her acts. We 
agreed in lamentable views of the condition and pros- 
pects of our country. People may seem astir; they are 
only half awake. On Thvirsday F. Greenwood comes, 
and I shall have another melancholy feast of forebodings. 
On no other subject am I pessimistic. I foresee a sad- 
dened heart for Ulrica reading her "Times" in days when 
I am insensible to buffets. For forty years I have borne 
this weight of apprehension. Some young men of the 
Universities show signs of life. G. M. Trevelyan writes 
for my stated approval of a new Review that will speak 
boldly upon England's needs and deficiencies, and be 
patriotic, as he implies, by taking a wider embrace than 
common patriotism. We have to think beyond the purse 
and the heart if we would have them secure. Of course 



^t.74] GEORGE MEREDITH 487 

I wrote the words he wanted. The lucky fellow is off 
by way of Tyrol to the Carpathians, and takes, he says, 
the Duel in the Pass, in "Vittoria," en route. How I 
could pray to show you the scenes of Vittoria's wander- 
ings with Angelo Guidascarpi over the sub-Alpine heights 
from Brescia to Bormio, and away to Meran in the Adige 
valley. I was there when, though liking the Austrians, 
I burned for Italy. I fancy I did justice to both sides. 
The young poet Laurance Binyon has written to me for 
permission to make use of the story of Guidascarpi for a 
•drama he has been commissioned to compose for Mrs. 
Patrick Campbell: prose, a harder task in English than 
in French. Few Englishmen can write a resonant prose 
dialogue that is not blatant; and when avoiding those 
alarms, they drop to ilabbiness. It is merely to say that 
Style is rarely achieved here. Your literary hero, lectur- 
ing on Style, may have a different opinion. The prose in 
Shakespeare and in Congreve is perfect. They have al- 
ways the right accent on their terminations. Apart from 
Drama, Swift is a great exemplar; Bolingbroke, and in 
his mild tea-table way, Addison, follow. Johnson and 
Macaulay wielded bludgeons; they had not the strength 
that can be supple. Gibbon could take a long stride with 
the leg of a dancing-master; he could not take a short 
one. Matthew Arnold was born from the pulpit and oc- 
cupied it, and might have sermonised for all time, but 
that he conceived the head of the clerk below to be the 
sconce of the British public, and that he must drum on 
it with an iterated phrase perpetually to awaken under- 
standing. However, although I consider it unlikely that 
I am in accord with your lecturer, I will own that I am 
beside the mark in addressing you upon a thing he will 
have handled more effectively. I dread the presentation 
of any of my works on the stage. Here is another Amer- 
ican actress applying for permission to dramatise ''Diana." 
I must let her know that Ulrica dislikes the character. 
Ulrica, she will say, is very English. Yet Ulrica says 
of herself, that she has imagination. Then she ought 
to be able to enter the breast of a passionate woman, a 
wife widowed, in love, much needing to be on her guard 
against the man, ready to fly with him, hating to in- 
trigue; and while she totter in this juncture, assailed by 



488 GEOKGE MEEEDITH [^Et. 77 

monetary needs, vain of her touch on political secrets, 
subject in a crisis to a swoon of the mind — mark that, 
O imaginative lady! for there are women and noble 
w;omen, who stand unpractised and alone in the world, 
liable to these attacks, driven for the moment back on 
their instincts: cannot Ulrica compassionately, if not sis- 
terly, realize the position? No, I see her affecting medi- 
tation upon it with the bosom of a rock under her bal- 
ancing air, or say a person called on by his Lord to be 
just toward one who has impugned his creed. ^'She be- 
haved basely." But she was physically and mentally un- 
aware of the importance of the secret. "She ceases to 
interest me from that instant and in the comparison of 
her deeds, her consideration for her virtue sickens me." 
Better if that had broken down, by the accident of things, 
and obviated the other; but be charitable, and accept the 
good in her — "I can't," Even so the parson with the 
infidel. I had intended writing a lecture this time on one 
of the deep themes of Life, that might help to rational 
views. It shall come. You are not to be bothered about 
replying. Evidently you find it a burdensome duty. Just 
now with your Coronation robings and arrangements, it 
would task you; the reading of letters as well, till the 
panting fortnight after England's greatest event has gone 
by. I have to trust that you will bear the fatigue of the 
day. 

George Meredith. 

[^t.77] 

To Edmund Gosse 
["the dynasts"] 

Box Hill, Dorking, July 2, 1905. 
Dear Mr. Gosse, — 

Your letter was among the pleasantest ones, and said 
the most to me. Eor you are that rare thing in our coun- 
try, a critic — and the something more which is needed 
for the office, — or else we have a Gifford or a Jeffrey. 

Hardy was here some days back. I am always glad to 
see him, and have regrets at his going; for the double 
reason, that I like him, and am afflicted by his twilight 
view of life. He questioned me as to "The Dynasts," I 



.Et. 77] GEORGE MEREDITH 489 

spoke (needlessly) in favour of his continuing it now 
that it had a commencement. It was useless to say, as 
I think, that he would have made it more effective in 
prose, where he is more at home than in verse, though 
here and there he produces good stuff. Of much of 
Browning I could say the same. 

Pray give me a chance of conversing with you some 
day after August. — Faithfully yours, 

George Meredith. 

[^t. 77] 

To the Rt. Hox. John Morley 

["l SHALL RETAIN MY LAUGH IX DEATH'S EAR"] 

Box Hill, Dorkixg, Nov. 9, 1905. 
Dearest Morley, — 

The thought of you as coming here with a chill on you 
gives me a twitch of fever. Send me word of your present 
state. As for me, after lying on my back three weeks, 
I find that I have been shipped by Tedium into the 
region of Doldrums, where alL things droop, and Patience, 
like a trodden Toad, hops and yawns in the endeavour to 
act up to her name, under whip of Necessity. The bone 
seems to be mending. To-morrow a man comes to ex- 
amine it by X rays. If favourable, I may hope to have 
the leg in plaster of Paris and say good-bye to bed by 
day. Had you seen the leg at first, you would have 
conceived a blackamoor emerging from a prize-fight. Now 
it is like Tommy after settling accounts at school. The 
accident occurred by my knocking my foot on the scul- 
lery threshold, so that I pitched forward while my foot 
was held and twisted. 

Give my love to your wife. I have tried to be worthy 
of her resignation, and can imagine that I shall retain 
my laugh in Death's ear, for that is what our Maker 
prizes in men. — All yours, 

George Meredith. 



490 CHARLES L. DODGSON [^t. 41 

[^t. 80] 

To Mrs. Sturgis* 
["the scripture moveth us"] 

Box Hill, Dorking, August 20, 1908. 
My Dearie, — 

We have now S.west wind, fleets of white cloud and 
breezy foliage. But there are showers and you may have 
them. Be careful as to your hold of the umbrella in 
your dash to the Danish Pavilion, for the gusts at Over- 
strand are very treacherous. Several women there have 
been taken up, and landed below the cliffs — comfortably 
enough, as it chanced, but causing perturbation. One 
old lady, however, on her way to Church, a Mrs. Humfer 
(you may look for the name in the Churchyard), went 
aloft, and unfortunately, just on the ridge of the cliffs, 
her 'brella turned its sustaining cup upward and down 
she came, by good luck in the water. There the rescuer 
heard her saying, as if in response with the Minister at 
Lessons: "The Scripture moveth us in sundry places"; 
and she continued repeating it. For this reason, take 
my counsel, and the moment you feel the 'brella pulling, 
let go at once. It may save you from another surgeon. 
In any case, I would not have you be the talk of Cromer, 
and the subject of Ballads. — The news here is of Charlie 
Lewin's marriage, 16th Sept., at Holmbury. 

George Meredith. 

[JFA. 41] 

CHARLES L. DODGSON (LEWIS CARROLL) 

1832-1898 

To A Child (Miss Gaynor Simpson) 

["dancing, of my peculiar kind"] 

December 27, 1873. 
My dear Gaynor, — 

My name is spelt with a "G," that is to say "Dodgson." 
Any one who spells it the same as that wretch (I mean 
of course the Chairman of Committees in the House of 
Commons) offends me deeply, and for ever! It is a thing 

* His daughter. 



^t.48] WILLIAM MOERIS 491 

I can forget, but never can forgive! If you do it again,. 
I shall call you " 'aynor." Could you live happy with such 
a name? 

As to dancing, my dear, I never dance, unless I am 
allowed to do it in my own peculiar way. There is no use 
trying to describe it: it has to be seen to be believed. 
The last house I tried it in, the floor broke through. 
But then it was a poor sort of floor — the beams were only 
six inches thick, hardly worth calling beams at all: stone 
arches are much more sensible, when any dancing, of 
my peculiar Jcind, is to be done. Did you ever see the 
Rhinoceros, and the Hippopotamus, at the Zoological Gar- 
dens, trying to dance a minuet together? It is a touch- 
ing sight. 

Give any message from me to Amy that you think will 
be most likely to surprise her, and believe me. 

Your affectionate friend, 

Lewis Carroll. 



[^t.48] WILLIAM MORRIS 

1834-1896 
To A Friend 

[SWINBURNE] 

[1882]' 
As to the poem,* I have made two or three attempts to 
read it, but have failed, not being in the mood I sup- 
pose: nothing would lay hold of me at all. This is 
doubtless my own fault, since it certainly did seem very 
fine. But, to confess and be hanged, you know I never 
could really sympathize with Swinburne's work; it al- 
ways seemed to me to be founded on literature, not on 
nature. In saying this I really cannot accuse myself of 
any jealousy on the subject, as I think also you will not. 
Now I believe that Swinburne's sympathy with literature- 
is most genuine and complete; and it is a pleasure to 
hear him talk about it, which he does in the best vein 
possible; he is most steadily enthusiastic about it. Now 
time was when the poetry resulting merely from this. 

* Tristram of Lyon esse. 



492 WILLIAM MOKKIS [.Et. 60 

intense study and love of literature might have been, 
if not the best, yet at any rate very worthy and endur- 
ing: but in these days when all the arts, even poetry, 
are like to be overwhelmed under the mass of material 
riches which civilization has made and is making more 
and more hastily every day; riches which the world has 
made indeed, but cannot use to any good purpose: in 
these days the issue between art, that is, the godlike part 
of man, and mere bestiality, is so momentous, and the sur- 
roundings of life are so stern and unplayful, that noth- 
ing can take serious hold of people, or should do so, 
but that which is rooted deepest in reality and is quite 
at first hand : there is no room for anything which is not 
forced out of a man of deep feeling, because of its in- 
nate strength and vision. 

In all this I may be quite wrong and the lack may be 
in myself: I only state my opinion, I don't defend it; 
still less do I my own poetry. 



[^t. 60] 

To Philip Webb* 
["the public does not really care about them"] 

Kelm SCOTT House, 

August 27th, '94. 
My dear Fellow, — 

A traveller once entered a western hotel in America 
and went up to the clerk in his box (as the custom is in 
that country) and ordered chicken for his dinner: the 
clerk, without any trouble in his face, put his hand into 
his desk, and drew out a derringer, wherewith he cov- 
ered the newcomer and said in a calm historic voice: 
"Stranger, you will not have chicken, you will have hash." 

This story you seem to have forgotten. So I will apply 
it, and say that you will have the Kelmscott books as 
they come out. In short you will have hash because it 
would upset me very much if you did not have a share 
in my "larx." 

As to the Olaf Saga, I had forgotten what you had 

* Who had remonstrated at Morris's generosity in presenting him with 
copies of Kelmscott books. 



.Et. 47] PHILLIPS BROOKS 493 

had; chiefly I think because I did not prize the big- 
paper copies much. They were done in the days of ig- 
norance, before the Kelmscott Press was, though hard on 
the time when it began. 

You see as to all these matters I do the books mainly 
for you and one or two others; the public does not really 
care about them a damn — which is stale. But I tell you 
I ivant you to have them, and finally you shall. 

Yours alfectionately, 

William Morris. 



[.^.47] PHILLIPS BROOKS 

1835-1893 
To Charles D. Cooper 

[impressions of INDIA] 

Chedambaram, [India,] 

Pebruary 22, 1883. 
Dear Cooper, — 

In case j'ou do not know where Chedambaram is, I 
will tell you that it is just ten miles from Vaithisvaran- 
koil, and it is hotter than Philadelphia in fly time. I 
have been celebrating the birthday of Mr. Washington 
by firing off bottles of soda water all the morning ever 
since we came in from our early visit to the wonderful 
pagoda which is the marvel of this beautiful but be- 
nighted heathen town. The only way to see things here 
in Southern India is to start at daybreak, when the 
country is cool and lovelier than anything you can im- 
agine. The palm-trees are waving in the early breeze. 
The elephants go crushing along with painted trunks and 
gilded tusks. The pretty Hindu girls are drawing water 
at the wells under the banana groves. The naked chil- 
dren are frolicking in the dust of the bazaars. The old 
men and women are drinking their early cocoanut, and 
you jolt along on the straw, in your creaking bullock 
cart, as joUy as a rajah. So we went this morning to do 
homage to the false gods. Vishnu had gone off on a pil- 
grimage, and his shrine was empty, but Siva was at home, 
and the howling devotees were in the middle of the morn- 
ing service. They must have been about at the second 



494 PHILLIPS BEOOKS [^A. 47 

lesson when we arrived, but, owing to the peculiar char- 
acter of their language, it was not easy to make out 
just what stage of the morning exercises they had reached. 
But it didn't much matter, for immediately on our ar- 
rival the worship stopped where it was, and the officiating 
clergyman came forward and ridiculously presented us 
with a lime each, and then tried to put a garland of 
flowers about our Christian necks. This last attention 
I refused with indignation, at his making a heathen so 
summarily out of a respectable presbyter of the P. E. 
Church from Bishop Paddock's diocese. He gracefully 
intimated that he didn't mind my being mad, but would 
pocket the insult (or do whatever a fellow does who has 
no pocket, or indeed anything else except a dirty rag 
about his loins), provided I gave him the rupee which 
he expected all the same. While I was doing this there 
was a noise like seven pandemoniums outside, and soon 
in through the gate came a wild crowd of savages, yelling 
like fiends and carrying on their shoulders a great plat- 
form on which was a big brass idol all daubed with 
grease and hung with flowers. This was Vishnu, just 
returned from his sea bath, and in front of him came 
the craziest band of music m.ade up of lunatics banging on 
tom-toms and .screeching away on brazen trumpets three 
feet long. We saw the ugly Divinity safe in his shrine, 
and left the pagans yelling in their joy at getting their 
ugly image safely home. 

By this time the sun was blazing, as I said, and we 
came home to the bungalow, which does duty for a tav- 
ern, and set a small Hindu to pulling away at a punkah 
rope at the cost of three cents a day. Then we cut up 
our sacred limes and poured soda water on the juice of 
them and made a drink which I advise you to try if 
ever you have to spend a hot day in Chedambaram. 
Then we breakfasted on rice and curry and fried bana- 
nas, and then I thought I would write to you and send 
you m-y blessing out of the depths of this Hindu dark- 
ness. 

I can't tell you what a delightful thing this Indian 
trip has been. From the snows of the Himalayas down 
to these burning and luxuriant tropics, from the wonder- 
ful beauty of the exquisite Taj of the Mohammedan Em- 



^t. 28] JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 495 

peror at Agra down to the grotesque splendor of this 
great Brahmin sanctuary which we have seen to-day, 
everything has been fascinating. Oh, if you and Mc- 
Vickar and George Strong had been with me all the way! 
I have had a pleasant young companion, who has behaved 
beautifully except when he got the smallpox in Delhi, 
and kept us there two weeks. But Delhi is, after all, 
the most interesting place in India, and if he was going 
to do it he could not have chosen a better place. We 
were guests there of some fine young English mission- 
aries, who behaved splendidly under the affliction which 
we brought down upon them, and I went about with them 
and saw the ins and outs of missionary life which, when 
the right men are at it, is a splendid thing. 

The hot season has set in within the last few days and 
we must be away, but I shall leave these gentle Hindus 
and their lovely land with great regret. Now we are on 
our way to Ceylon, and two weeks from to-day we sail 
from Colombo back to Suez, and then comes Spain. Are 
you right well, old fellow, and does the dear old study 
look just the way it used to do, and are you counting as 
much as I am the time when we shall meet again there 
at General Convention, and talk it all over and abuse 

the s in the dear old way? 

Ever and ever yours, 

P. B. 

[^t. 28] 

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 

1840-1893 
To Henry SidCxWICK 

["RICHARD FEVEREL"] 

[Clifton Hill House, 

IVIay 17, 1869.] 

We are still exiles from our house, which is at present 

a chaos. The movers of my goods have lost above three 

boxes of my favourite books, ingeniously selected from 

the beginnings and ends of editions. 

I have finished "Kichard Feverel." I kept constantly 
telling myself that "this novelist is a poet," and when I 
came to the chapter called "An Enchantress," I felt that 



496 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS [^t. 45 

the nineteenth century was ever so far ahead of the 
Elizabethans. Suddenly I remembered that these were 
both your ideas. The man affects me terribly. I quite 
see why, in spite of his being one of our greatest novel- 
ists, he is not read. The sense of pain produced by 
R. F. is intense. My mind ached at passages. I was 
stifled, and had to stop reading. Even Balzac does not 
so affect me, for Balzac is more scientific on the one 
side, and more in his subject on the other. What is 
terrible about G. M. is, that he feels it as a poet, and 
stands aside from it as an ironic showman. There is a 
great want of truth, verisimilitude rather, about some of 
the characters. I don't realise Sir Austin, or indeed 
Richard, except as a picture. 

Since I last wrote things have not altered much, ex- 
cept that my emotions are less occupied and my imag- 
ination more exercised. It is difficult to do anything 
educationally, or towards living in common here. But 
I grow and steady and intensify in feeling. The lec- 
tures do pretty well, but I have not the art of lecturing; 
and I do not believe in my own lectures. Yet I keep a 
fair face and try to be impressive. 



[^t. 45] 

To Robert Louis Stevenson 

["dr. JEKYLL and MR. HYDE," AVITH A SUGGESTION] 

Davos, March 1, 1886. 
I doubt whether any one has the right so to scrutinise 
"the abysma-l deeps of personality." You see I have been 
reading Dr. Jekyll. At least I think he ought to bring 
more of distinct belief in the resources of human nature, 
more faith, more sympathy with our frailty, into the 
matter than you have done. The art is burning and in- 
tense. The Peau de Chagrin disappears, and Poe's work is 
water. Also one discerns at once that this is an allegory 
of all two-nat^ired souls who yield consciously to evil. 
Most of us -^'.re on the brink of educating a Mr. Hyde 
at some epoch of our being. But the scientific cast of the 
allegory will only act as an incentive to moral self-murder 
with those who perceive the allegory's profundity. Louis, 



^t. 50] JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 497 

how had you the ''ilia dura, ferro et sere triplici duriora,'^ 
to write Dr. Jekyll? I know now what was meant when 
you were called a sprite. 

You see I am trembling under the magician's wand of 
your fancy, and rebelling against it with the scorn of a 
soul that hates to be contaminated with the mere picture 
of victorious evil. Our only chance seems to me to be 
to maintain, against all appearances, that evil can never 
and in no way be victorious. 

I would that you would tell me whether you only used 
your terrible motif as a good ground- work for a ghastly 
tale, or whether you meant it to have a moral purpose. 
But I suppose you won't tell me. 

I seem- to have lost you so utterly that I can afford 
to fling truth of the crudest in your face. And yet I 
love you and think of you daily, and have Dew Smith's 
portrait of you in front of me. 

The suicide end of Dr. Jekyll is too commonplace. 
Dr. Jekyll ought to have given Mr. Hyde up to justice. 
This would have vindicated the sense of human dignity 
which is so horribly outraged in your book. 



[^t. 50] 

To Edmund Gosse 
[tobogganing] 

Davos, February 23rd, 1891. 
... I have lost my power of living like an invalid. 
The constant effort of a lifetime to control my health 
and create the best conditions for repelling disease, has 
worn my faculties of endurance out. So I do things now 
which are not prudent. I drove yesterday to a village two 
hours away from here; attended a peasant theatre, which 
was tremendous fun; dined with three good companions, 
Swiss; and drove home at midnight in an open sledge 
under the most glorious moon and icy wind from the 
glaciers. This is not a cure for bronchitis. And again, 
to-day, I started with my girls and our toboggans, and 
ran a course of four miles, crashing at lightning speed 
over the snow and ice. We did the journey in about 
eleven minutes, and I came in breathless, dead-beat, al- 



498 SIDNEY LANIER [^Et. 35 

most fainting. Then home in the railway, with open 
windows and a mad crew of young men and maidens 
excited by this thrilling exercise. It was solemn and 
beautiful upon the run. The sun had set, but all the 
heavens were rosy with its after-glow, and the peaks and 
snow-fields which surrounded us shone in every tone 
of crimson and saffron. Then from behind the vast 
black bulk of a mountain mass, the rising full moon swam 
rapidly upon our sight, a huge transpicuous dew-pearl of 
intensest green, bathed in the warm colours of the burn- 
ing skies. People who summer in the Arctic circle de- 
scribe these luminous effects. Our rapid motion through 
the celestial wonders and over the myriad-tinted snow- 
path, added an intoxicating glory to the vision — until, 
as we descended from the upper height, the splendours 
and the path we sped upon were swallowed up in vast 
chasms of primeval pine-forests, whence we emerged again 
into the flooding silver of the moon, which at a lower 
level strove victoriously with the sunset-incandescence 
we had left behind. But this again was no cure for 
bronchitis. I have just supped at 11 P. M., and am 
writing to you with pipe in mouth before I turn into 
bed. 



[^t.35] SIDNEY LANIER 

1842-1881 
To Gibson Peacock 

[settling at BALTIMORE] 

33 Denmead St., Baltimore. Md., 

January 6, 1878. 
The painters, the whitewashers, the plumbers, the lock- 
smiths, the carpenters, the gas-fitters, the stove-put-up- 
ers, the carmen, the piano-movers, the carpet-layers, — all 
these have I seen, b^^rgained with, reproached for bad 
jobs, and finally paid off: I have also coaxed my land- 
lord into all manner of outlays for damp walls, cold 
bathrooms, and other like matters: I have furthermore 
bought at least three hundred and twenty-seven house- 
hold utensils -which suddenly came to be absolutely nec- 
essary to our existence: I have moreover hired a colored 



.^t. 35] SIDNEY LANIER 499 

gentlewoman who is willing to wear out my carpets, burn 
out my range, freeze out my water-pipes, and be gen- 
erally useful: I have also moved my family into our 
new home, have had a Xmas tree for the youngsters, 
have looked up a cheap school for Harry and Sidney, 
have discharged mj^ daily duties as first flute of the 
Peabody Orchestra, have written a couple of poems and 
part of an essay on Beethoven and Bismarck, have ac- 
complished at least a hundred thousand miscellaneous 
necessary nothings, — and have }wt. in consequence of the 
aforesaid, sent to you and my dear Maria the loving 
greetings whereof my heart has been full during the 
whole season. Maria's cards were duly distributed, and 
we were all touched with her charming little remem- 
brances. With how much i)leasure do I look forward to 
the time when I may kiss her hand in my own house! 
We are in a state of supreme content with our new 
home: it really seems to me as incredible that myriads 
of people have been living in their own homes here- 
tofore as to the young couple with a first baby it seems 
impossible that a great many other couples have had simi- 
lar prodigies. It is simply too delightful. Good heavens, 
how I wish that the whole world had a Home! 

I confess I am a little nervous about the gas-bills, 
which must come in, in the course of time; and there 
are the water-rates, and several sorts of imposts and taxes : 
but then, the dignity of being liable for such things( !) 
is a very supporting consideration. No man is a Bo- 
hemian who has to pay water-rates and a street-tax. 
Every day when I sit down in my dining-room — my 
dining-room! — I find the wish growing stronger that 
each poor soul in Baltimore, whether saint or sinner, 
could come and dine with me. How I would carve out 
the merrythoughts for the old hags! How I would 
stuff the big wall-eyed rascals till their rags ripped 
again ! There was a knight of old times who built the 
dining-hall of his castle across the highway, so that every 
wayfarer must perforce pass through: there the traveller, 
rich or poor, found always a trencher and wherewithal 
to fill it. Three times a day, in my own chair at my own 
table, do I envy that knight and wish that I might do 
as he did. 



[^t.21] KOBEKT LOUIS STEVENSON 
1850-1894 
To Alison Cunningham 
[to his nurse] 

[1871?] 
My dear Cummy, — 

I was greatly pleased by your letter in many ways. 
Of course, I was glad to hear from you; you know, you 
and I have so many old stories between us, that even if 
there was nothing else, even if there was not a very 
sincere respect and affection, we should always be glad 
to pass a nod. I say "even if there was not." But you 
know right well there is. Do not suppose that I shall 
ever forget those long, bitter nights, when I coughed and 
coughed and was so unhappy, and you were so patient and 
loving with a poor, sick child. Indeed, Cummy, I wish 
I might become a man worth talking of, if it were only 
that you should not have thrown away your pains. 

Happily, it is not the result of our acts that makes 
them brave and noble, but the acts themselves and the 
unselfish love that moved us to do them. "Inasmuch as 
you have done it unto one of the least of these." My 
dear old nurse, and you know there is nothing a man 
can say nearer his heart except his mother or his wife — 
my dear old nurse, God will make good to you all the 
good that you have done, and mercifully forgive you all 
the evil. And next time when the spring comes round, 
and everything is beginning once again, if you should 
happen to think that you might have had a child of your 
own, and that it was hard you should have spent so many 
years taking care of some one else's prodigal, just you 
think this — you have been for a great deal in my life; 
you have made much that there is in me, just as surely 
as if you had conceived me; and there are sons who are 
more ungrateful to their own mothers than I am to you. 
For I am not ungrateful, my dear Cummy, and it is 
with a very sincere emotion that I write myself your 
little boy, 

Louis. 



500 



JEt 22] EOBEET LOUIS STEVENSON 601 

[ J!:t. 22] 

To Charles Baxter 
[scotch theology] 

17 Heriot Kow, Edinburgh^ 
Sunday, February 2, 1873. 
My dear Baxter, — 

The thunderbolt has fallen with a vengeance now. On 
Friday night after leaving you, in the course of conver- 
sation, my father put me one or two questions as to 
beliefs, which I candidly answered. I really hate all 
lying so much now — a new-found honesty that has some- 
how come out of my late illness — that I could not so 
much as hesitate at the time; but if I had foreseen the 
real hell of everything since, I think I should have lied, 
as I have done so often before. I so far thought of 
my father, but I had forgotten my mother. And now! 
they are both ill, both silent, both as down in the mouth 
as if — I can find no simile. You may fancy how happy 
it is for me. If it were not too late, I think I could 
almost find it in my heart to retract, but it is too late; 
and again, am I to live my whole life as one falsehood? 
Of course, it is rougher than hell upon my father, but 
can I help it? They don't see either that my game is 
not the light-hearted scoffer; that I am not (as they 
call me) a careless infidel. I believe as much as they 
do, only generally in the inverse ratio: I am, I think, 
as honest as they can be in what I hold. I have not 
come hastily to my views. I reserve (as I told them) 
many points imtil I acquire fuller information, and do 
not think I am thus justly to be called "horrible atheist." 

Now what is to take place? What a curse I am to my 
parents! O Lord, what a pleasant thing it is to have 
just damned the happiness of (probably) the only two 
people who care a damn about you in the world! 

What is my life to be at this rate? What, you rascal? 
Answer — I have a pistol at your throat. If all that I 
hold true and most desire to spread is to be such death, 
and worse than death, in the eyes of my father and 
mother, what the devil am I to do? 

Here is a good heavy cross with a vengeance, and all 
rough with rusty nails that tear your fingers, only it is 



502 EGBERT LOUIS STEVENSON [^t. 24 

not I that have to carry it alone; I hold the light end, 
but the heavy burden falls on these two. 

Don't — I don't know what I was going to say. I am 
an abject idiot, which, all things considered, is not 
remarkable. — Ever your affectionate and horrible atheist, 

R. L. Stevenson. 

[^t. 24] 

To Mrs. Sitwell 
[children; early writing; a poet] 

Edinburgh, Tuesday [January, 1875]. 

I got your nice long gossiping letter to-day — I mean 
by that that there was more news in it than usual — and 
so, of course, I am pretty jolly. I am in the house, 
however, with such a beastly cold in the head. Our east 
winds begin already to be very cold. 

O, I have such a longing for children of my own; and 
yet I do not think I could bear it if I had one. I fancy 
I must feel more like a woman than like a man about 
that, r sometimes hate the children I see on the street — 
you know what I mean by hate — wish they were some- 
where else, and not there to mock me; and sometimes, 
again, I don't know how to go by them for the love 
of them, especially the very wee ones. 

Thursday. — I have been still in the house since I wrote, 
and I have worked. I finished the Italian story; not 
well, but as well as I can just now; I must go all over 
it again, some time soon, when I feel in the humour to 
better and perfect it. And now I have taken up an old 
story, begun years ago; and I have now rewritten all I 
had written of it then, and mean to finish it. What I 
have lost and gained is odd. As far as regards simple 
writing, of course, I am in another world now; but in 
some things, though more clumsy, I seem to have been 
freer and more plucky: this is a lesson I have taken to 
heart. I ,have got a jolly new name for my old story. 
I am going to call it A Country Dance; the two heroes 
keep changing places, you know; and the chapter where 
the most of this changing goes on is to be called "Up the 
middle, down the middle.'* It will be in six or (per- 



^t. 29] ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 50a 

haps) seven chapters. I have never worked harder in my 
life than these last four days. If I can only keep it up. 

Saturday. — Yesterday, Leslie Stephen, who was down 
here to lecture, called on me and took me up to see a 
poor fellow,* a poet who writes for him, and who has 
been eighteen months in our infirmary, and may be, for 
all I know, eighteen months more. It was very sad to 
see him there, in a little room with two beds, and a 
couple of sick children in the other bed ; a girl came in 
to visit the children, and played dominoes on the coun- 
terpane with them; the gas flared and crackled, the fire 
burned in a dull economical way; Stephen and I sat on 
a couple of chairs, and the poor fellow sat up in his 
bed with his hair and beard all tangled, and talked as 
cheerfully as if he had been in a King's palace, or the 
great King's palace of the blue air. He has taught 
himself two languages since he has been lying there. 
I shall try to be of use to him. 

We have had two beautiful spring days, mild as milk, 
windy withal, and the sun hot. I dreamed last night 
I was walking by moonlight round the place where the 
scene of my story is laid; it was all so quiet and sweet, 
and the blackbirds were singing as if it was day; it 
made my heart very cool and happy. — Ever yours, 

Robert Louis Stevenson. 

[.Et. 29] 

To W. E. HexleV 

["across the plains"] 

Crossing Nebraska^ [18"9]. 
My dear Henley, — 

I am sitting on the top of the cars with a mill party 
from Missouri going west for his health. Desolate flat 
prairie upon all hands. Here and there a herd of cattle; 
a yellow butterfly or two; a patch of wild, sunflowers; 
a wooden house or two; then a wooden church alone in 
miles of waste; then a wind-mill to pump water. When 
we stop, which we do often, for emigrants and freight 
travel together, the kine first, the men after, the whole 

* \V. E. Henley. 



504 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON [.Et. 29 

plain is heard singing with cicadse. This is a pause, as 
you may see from the writing. What happened to the 
old pedestrian emigrants, what was the tedium suffered 
by the Indians and trappers of our youth, the imag- 
ination trembles to conceive. This is now Saturday, 
23rd, and I have been steadily travelling since I parted 
from you at St. Pancras. It is a strange vicissitude 
from the Savile Club to this; I sleep with a man from 
Pennsylvania who has been in the States Navy, and mess 
with him and the Missouri bird already alluded to. We 
have a tin wash-bowl among four. I wear nothing but 
a shirt and a pair of trousers, and never button my shirt. 
When I land for a meal, I pass my coat and feel 
dressed. This life is to last till Friday, Saturday, or 
Sunday next. It is a strange affair to be an emigrant, 
as I hope you shall see in a future work. I wonder 
if this will be legible; my present station on the wagon 
roof, though airy compared to the cars, is both dirty 
and insecure. I can see the track straight before and 
straight behind me to either horizon. Peace of mind 
I enjoy with extreme serenity; I am doing right; I know 
no one will think so; and don't care. My body, how- 
ever, is all to whistles; I don't eat; but, man, I can 
sleep. The car in front of mine i^ chock full of Chinese. 

Monday. — What it is to be ill in an emigrant train let 
those declare who know. I slept none till late in the 
morning, overcome with laudanum, of which I had luck- 
ily a little bottle. All to-day I have eaten nothing, and 
only drunk two cups of tea, for each of which, on the 
pretext that the one was breakfast, and the other dinner, 
I was charged fifty cents. Our journey is through 
ghostly deserts, sage-brush and alkali, and rocks, without 
form or colour, a sad corner of the world. I confess I 
am not jolly, but mighty calm, in my distresses. My 
illness is a subject of g:reat mirth to some of my fellow 
travellers, and I smile rather sickly at their jests. 

We are going along Bitter Creek just now, a place 
infamous in the history of emigration, a place I shall 
remember myself among the blackest. I hope I may 
get this posted at Ogden, Utah. 

R. L. S. 



^t. 29] ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 505 

[^t. 29] 

To. Sidney Colvin 
[a day IX HIS life] 

608 BrsH Street, Sax rRAXCisco, 

[January 10, 1880]. 
My dear Colvin, — 

This is a circular letter to tell my estate fully. You 
have no right to it, being the worst of correspondents; 
but I wish to efface the impression of my last, so to 
you it goes. 

Any time between eight and half-past nine in the 
morning, a slender gentleman in an ulster, with a vol- 
ume buttoned into the breast of it, may be observed 
leaving No. 608 Bush and descending Powell with an 
active step. The gentleman is R. L. S.; the volume 
relates to Benjamin Franklin, on whom he meditates one 
of his charming essays. He descends Powell, crosses 
Market, and descends in Sixth on a branch of the orig- 
inal Pine Street Coffee House, no less; I believe he 
would be capable of going to the original itself, if he 
could only find it. In the branch he seats himself at a 
table covered with waxcloth, and a pampered menial, of 
High-Dutch extraction and, indeed, as yet only partially 
extracted, lays before him a cup of coffee, a roll, and a 
pat of butter, all, to quote the deity, very good. A 
while ago, and R. L. S. used to find the supply of butter 
insufficient ; but he has now learned the art to exactitude, 
and butter and roll expire at the same moment. For this 
refection he pays ten cents, or fivepence sterling (£0. Os. 
5d.). 

Half an hour later, the inhabitants of Bush Street 
obser^^e the same slender gentleman armed, like George 
Washington, with his little hatchet, splitting kindling, and 
breaking coal for his fire. He does this quasi-publicly 
upon the window-sill; but this is not to be attributed to 
any love of notoriety, though he is indeed vain of his 
prowess with the hatchet (which he persists in calling 
an axe), and daily surprised at the perpetuation of his 
fingers. The reason is this: that the sill is a strong, 
supporting beam, and that blows of the same emphasis 
in other parts of his room might knock the entire shantv 



506 ROBEKT LOFIR STEVENSON [Mi. 29 

into hell. Thenceforth, for from three to four hours, he 
is engaged darkly with an inkbottle. Yet he is not 
blacking his boots, for the only pair that he possesses 
are innocent of lustre and wear the natural hue of the 
material turned up with caked and venerable slush. The 
yoimgest child of his landlady remarks several times a 
day, as this strange occupant enters or quits the house, 
"Dere's de author." Can it be that this bright-haired 
innocent has found the true clue to the mystery? The 
being in question is, at least, poor enough to belong to 
that honourable craft. 

His next appearance is at the restaurant of one Dona- 
dieu, in Bush Street, between Dupont and Kearney, 
where a copious meal, half a bottle of wine, coffee and 
brandy may be procured for the sum of four bits, alias 
fifty cents, £0. 2s. 2d. sterling. The wine is put down 
in a whole bottleful, and it is strange and painful to 
observe the greed with which the gentleman in question 
seeks to secure the last drop of his allotted half, and 
the scrupulousness with which he seeks to avoid taking 
the first drop of the other. This is partly explained by 
the fact that if he were to go over the mark — bang 
would go a tenpence. He is again armed with a book, 
but his best friends will learn with pain that he seems 
at this hour to have deserted the more serious studies 
of the morning. When last observed, he was studying 
with apparent zest the exploits of one Rocambole by the 
late Vicomte Ponson du Terrail. This work, originally 
of prodigious dimensions, he had cut into liths or thick- 
nesses, apparently for convenience of carriage. 

Then the being walks, where is not certain. But by 
about half-past four a light beams from the windows of 
608 Bush, and he may be observed sometimes engaged 
in correspondence, sometimes once again plunged in the 
mysterious rites of the forenoon. About six he returns 
to the Branch Original, where he once more imbrues 
himself to the worth of fivepence in coffee and roll. The 
evening is devoted to writing and reading, and by eleven 
or half-past darkness closes over this weird and truculent 
existence. 

As for coin, you see I don't spend much, only you and 
Henley both seem to think my work rather bosh nowa- 



JEi. 29] ROBEKT LOUIS STEVENSON 507 

days, and I do want to make as much as I was making, 
that is £200; if I can do that, I can swiiii: last year, 
vTith my ill-health I touched only £109, that would not 
do, I could not fight it through on that; but on £200, as 
I say, I am good for the world, and can even in this quiet 
way save a little, and that I must do. The worst is 
my health; it is suspected I had an ague chill yesterday; 
I shall know by to-morrow, and you know if I am to be 
laid down with ague the game is pretty well lost. But I 
don't know; I managed to write a good deal down in 
Monterey, when I was pretty sickly most of the time, 
and, by God, I'll try, ague and all. I have to ask you 
frankly, when you write, to give me any good news you 
can, and chat a little, but just in the meantime, give 
me no bad. If I could get "Thoreau," Emigrant, and 
Vendetta all finished and out of my hand, I should feel 
like a man who had made half a year's income in a 
half year; but until the last two are finished, you see, 
they don't fairly count. 

I am afraid I bore you sadly with this perpetual talk 
about my aft'airs; I will try and stow it; but you see, it 
touches me nearly. I'm the miser in earnest now: last 
night, when I felt so ill, the supposed ague chill, it 
seemed strange not to be able to afford a drink. I would 
have walked half a mile, tired as I felt, for a brandy and 
soda. — Ever yours, 

R. L. S. 

[iEt. 29] 

To Edmund Gosse 
[a "friendly game" with death] 

San Francisco, Cal., 

April 16 [1880]. 
My dear Gosse, — 

You have not answered my last ; and I know you will 
repent when you hear how near I have been to another 
world. For about six weeks I have been in utter doubt; 
it was a toss-up for life or death all that time; but I 
won the toss, sir, and Hades went off once more dis- 
comfited. This is not the first time, nor will it be the 
last, that I have a friendly game with that gentleman. 



608 EGBERT LOUIS STEVENSON [^t. 29 

I know he will end by cleaning me out; but the rogue 
is insidious, and the habit of that sort of gambling seems 
to be a part of my nature; it was, I suspect, too much 
indulged in youth; break your children of this tendency, 
my dear Gosse, from the first. It is, when once formed, 
a habit more fatal than opium — I speak, as St. Paul says, 
like a fool. I have been very very sick; on the verge 
of a galloping consumption, cold sweats, prostrating at- 
tacks of cough, sinking' fits in which I lost the power of 
speech, fever, and all the ugliest circumstances of the 
disease; and I have cause to bless God, my wife that is 
to be, and one Dr. Bamford (a name the Muse repels), 
that I have come out of all this, and got my feet once 
more upon a little hilltop, with a fair prospect of life 
and some new desire of living. Yet I did not wish to 
die, neither; only I felt unable to go on farther with that 
rough horseplay of human life: a man must be pretty 
well to take the business in good part. Yet I felt all the 
time that I had done nothing to entitle me to an hon- 
ourable discharge; that I had taken up many obligations 
and begun many friendships which I had no right to put 
away from me; and that for me to die was to play the 
cur and slinking sybarite, and desert the colours on the 
eve of the decisive fight. Of course I have done no work 
for I do not know how long; and here you can triumph. 
I have been reduced to writing verses for amusement. A 
fact. The whirligig of time brings in its revenges, after 
all. But I'll have them buried with me, I think, for I 
have not the heart to burn them while I live. Do write. 
I shall go to the mountains as soon as the weather clears; 
on the way thither, I marry myself; then I set up my 
family altar among the pinewoods, 3000 feet, sir, from 
the disputatious sea. — I am, dear Weg, most truly yours, 

R. L. S. 



^t. 30] KOBEET LOUIS STEVENSON 509 

[^t. 30] 

To W. E. Henley 
["treasure island"] 

Braemar, August, 1881. 
My dear Henley, — 

Of course I am a rogue. Why, Lord, it's known, man; 
but you should remember I have had a horrid cold. Now 
I'm better, I think; and see here — nobody, not you, nor 
Lang, nor the devil, will hurry me with our crawlers.* 
They are coming. Four of them are as good as done, and 
the rest will come when ripe; but I am now on another 
lay for the moment, purely owing to Lloyd, this one; but 
I believe there's more coin in it than in any amount of 
crawlers: now, see here, "The Sea-Cook, or Treasure 
Island: A Story for Boys." 

If this don't fetch the kids, why, they have gone rot- 
ten since my day. Will you be surprised to learn that it 
is about Buccaneers, that it begins in the Admiral Ben- 
how public-house on Devon coast, that it's all about a 
map, and a treasure, and a mutiny, and a derelict ship, 
and a current, and a fine old Squire Trelawney (the real 
Tre, purged of literature and sin, to suit the infant 
mind), and a doctor, and another doctor, and a sea-cook 
with one leg, and a sea-song with the chorus "Yo-ho-ho 
and a bottle of rum" (at the third Ho you heave at the 
capstan bars), which is a real buccaneer's song, only 
known to the crew of the late Captain Flint (died of 
rum at Key West, much regretted, friends will please 
accept this intimation) ; and lastly, would you be sur- 
prised to hear, in this connection, the name of Routledge? 
That's the kind of man I am, blast your eyes. Two chap- 
ters are written, and have been tried on Lloyd with great 
success; the trouble is to work it off without oaths. Buc- 
caneers without oaths — bricks without straw. But youth 
and the fond parent have to be consulted. 

And now look here — this is next day — and three chap- 
ters are written and read. (Chapter I. The Old Seadog 
at the Admiral Benhoiv. Chapter II. Black Dog appears 
and disappears. Chapter III. The Black Spot.) All now 

* Tales of horror. 



510 EOBEET LOUIS STEVENSON [^t. 32 

lieard by Lloyd, F., and my father and mother, with high 
approval. It's quite silly and horrid fun, and what I 
want is the best book about the Buccaneers that can be 
had — the latter B's above all, Blackbeard and sich, and 
^et Nutt or Bain to send it skimming by the fastest post. 
And now I know you'll write to me, for "The Sea-Cook's" 
sake. 

Your "Admiral Guinea" is curiously near my line, but 
of course I'm fooling; and your admiral sounds like a 
shublime gent. Stick to him like wax — he'll do. My 
Trelawney is, as I indicate, several thousand sea-miles off 
the lie of the original or your Admiral Guinea; and be- 
sides, I have no more about him yet but one mention of 
his name, and I think it likely he may turn yet farther 
from the model in the course of handling. A chapter a 
day I mean to do ; they are short ; and perhaps in a month 
"The Sea-Cook" may to Koutledge go, yo-ho-ho and a 
hottle of rum! My Trelawney has a strong dash of Lan- 
dor, as I see him from here. No women in the story, 
Lloyd's orders; and who so blithe to obey? It's awful 
fun, boys' stories; you just indulge the pleasure of your 
heart, that's all; no trouble, no strain. The only stiff 
thing is to get it ended — that I don't see, but I look to 
a volcano. O sweet, O generous, O human toils! You 
would like my blind beggar in Chapter III., I believe; 
no writing, just drive along as the words come and the 
pen will scratch! 

K. L. S., 
Author of Boys' Stories. 
[^t. 32] 

To E. A. M. Stevenson 
["there is but one art — TO omit"] 

La Solitude, Hyeres-les-Palmiers, 

[October, 1883]. 
My dear Boh, — 

Yes, I go.t both your letters at Lyons, but have been 
since then decading in several steps. Toothache; fever; 
Ferrier's death; lung. Now it is decided I am to leave 
to-morrow, penniless, for Nice to see Dr. Williams. 

I was much struck by your last. I have written a 
breathless note on Eealism for Henley; a fifth part of the 



JEt 32] ROBEKT LOUIS STEVENSON 511 

subject hurriedly touched, which will show you how my 
thoughts are driving. You are now at last beginning to 
think upon the problems of executive, plastic art, for you 
are now for the first time attacking them. Hitherto you 
have spoken and thought of two things — technique and 
the ars a^tiinn, or common background of all arts. Studio 
work is the real touch. That is the genial error of the 
present French teaching. Realism I regard as a mere 
question of method. The "brown foreground," "old 
mastery," and the like, ranking with villanelles,, as tech- 
nical sports and pastimes. Real art, whether ideal or 
realistic, addresses precisely the same feeling, and seeks 
the same qualities — significance or charm. And the same 
— very same — inspiration is only methodically differenti- 
ated according as the artist is an arrant realist or an 
arrant idealist. Each, by his own method, seeks to save 
and perpetuate the same significance or charm; the one 
by suppressing, the other by forcing, detail. All other 
idealism is the brown foreground over again, and hence 
only art in the sense of a game, like cup and ball. All 
other realism is not art at all — but not at all. It is, 
then, an insincere and showy handicraft. 

Were you to re-read some Balzac, as I have been doing, 
it would greatly help to clear your eyes. He was a man 
who never found his method. An inarticulate Shake- 
speare, smothered under forcible-feeble detail. It is as- 
tounding to the riper mind how bad he is, how feeble, 
how untrue, how tedious; and, of course, when he sur- 
rendered to his temperament, how good and powerful. 
And yet never plain nor clear. He could not consent to 
be dull, and thus became so. He would leave nothing 
undeveloped, and thus drowned out of sight of land amid 
the multitude of crying and incongruous details. There 
is but one art — to omit! O if I knew how to omit, I 
would ask no other knowledge. A man who knew how 
to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper. 

Your definition of seeing is quite right. It is the first 
part of omission to be partly blind. Artistic sight is 
judicious blindness. Sam Bough must have been a jolly 
blind old boy. He would turn a corner, look for one-half 
or quarter minute, and then say, "This'll do, lad." Down 
he sat, there and then, with whole artistic plan, scheme 



512 KOBEKT LOUIS STEVENSON [^Et. 32 

of colour, and the like, and began by laying a founda- 
tion of powerful and seemingly incongruous colour on 
the block. He saw, not the scene, but the water-colour 
sketch. Every artist by sixty should so behold nature. 
Where does he learn that? In the studio, I swear. He 
goes to nature for facts, relations, values — material; as a 
man, before writing a historical novel, reads up memoirs. 
But it is not by reading memoirs that he has learned the 
selective criterion. He has learned that in the practice 
of his art; and he will never learn it well, but when dis- 
engaged from the ardent struggle of immediate repre- 
sentations, of realistic and ex facto art. He learns it in 
the crystallisation of day-dreams; in changing, not in 
copying, fact; in the pursuit of the ideal, not in the 
study of nature. These temples of art are, as you say, 
inaccessible to the realistic climber. It is not by looking 
at the sea that you get 

"The multitudinous, seas incarnadine," 

nor by looking at Mont Blanc that you find 

"And visited all night by troops of stars." 

A kind of ardour of the blood is the mother of all this; 
and according as this ardour is swayed by knowledge and 
seconded by craft, the art expression flows clear, and sig- 
nificance and charm, like a moon rising, are born above 
the barren juggle of mere symbols. 

The painter must study more from nature than the 
man of words. But why? Because literature deals with 
men's business and passions which, in the game of life, 
we are irresistibly obliged to study; but painting with 
relations of light, and colour, and significances, and form, 
which, from the immemorial habit of the race, we pass 
over with an unregardful eye. Hence this crouching 
upon camp-stools, and these crusts. But neither one nor 
other is a part of art, only preliminary studies. 

I want you to help me to get people to understand that 
realism is a method, and only methodic in its conse- 
quences; when the realist is an artist, that is, and sup- 
posing the idealist with "whom you compare him to be 



^t. 34] EGBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 513 

anything- but a farceur and a dilettante. The two schools 
of working do, and should, lead to the choice of different 
subjects. But that is a consequence, not a cause. See 
my chaotic note, which will appear, I fancy, in Novem- 
ber in Henley's sheet. 

Poor Ferrier, it bust me horrid. He was, after you, 
the oldest of my friends. 

I am now very tired, and will go to bed having pre- 
lected freely. Fanny will finish. 

R. L. S. 

[^t. 34] 

To William Archer 
[in remonstraxce] 
Skerryvore, Bournemouth, October 28, 1885. 
Dear Mr. Archer, — 

I have read your paper with my customary admiration; 
it is very witty, very adroit; it contains a great deal that 
is excellently true (particularly the parts about my stories 
and the description of me as an artist in life) ; but you 
will not be surprised if I do not think it altogether just. 
It seems to me, in particular, that you have wilfully read 
all my works in terms of my earliest; my aim, even in 
style, has quite changed in the last six or seven years; 
and this I should have thought you would have noticed. 
Again, your first remark upon the affectation of the italic 
names; a practice only followed in my two affected little 
books of travel, where a typographical minauderie of the 
sort appeared to me in character; and what you say of 
it, then, is quite just. But why should you forget your- 
self and use these same italics as an index to my theology 
some pages further on? This is lightness of touch in- 
deed; may I say, it is almost sharpness of practice? 

Excuse these remarks. I have been on the whole much 
interested, and sometimes amused. Are you aware that 
the praiser of this "brave gymnasium" has not seen a 
canoe nor taken a long walk since '79? that he is rarely 
out of the house nowadays, and carries his arm in a 
sling? Can you imagine that he is a backslidden com- 
munist, and is sure he will go to hell (if there be such 
an excellent institution) for the luxury in which he lives? 



514 EOBEKT LOUIS STEVENSON [JEt. 34 

And can you believe that, though it is gaily expressed, 
the thought is hag and skeleton in every moment of 
vacuity or depression ? Can you conceive how profoundly 
I am irritated by the opposite affectation to my own, 
when I see strong men and rich men bleating about their 
sorrows and the burthen of life, in a world full of "can- 
cerous paupers," and poor sick children, and the fatally 
bereaved, ay, and down even to such happy creatures as 
myself, who has yet been obliged to strip himself, one 
after another, of all the pleasures that he had chosen ex- 
cept smoking (and the days of that I know in my heart 
ought to be over), I forgot eating, which I still enjoy, and 
who sees the circle of impotence closing very slowly but 
quite steadily around hini? In my view, one dank, dis- 
pirited word is harmful, a crime of lese-humanite, a 
piece of acquired evil; every gay, every bright word or 
picture, like every pleasant air of music, is a piece of 
pleasure set afloat; the reader catches it, and, if he be 
healthy, goes on his way rejoicing; and it is the business 
of art so to send him, as often as possible. 

For what you say, so kindly, so prettily, so precisely, 
of my style, I must in particular thank you; though even 
here, I am vexed you should not have remarked on my 
attempted change of manner: seemingly this attempt is 
still quite unsuccessful! Well, we shall fight it out on 
this line if it takes all summer. 

And now for my last word: Mrs. Stevenson is very 
anxious that you should see me, and that she should see 
you, in the flesh. If you at all share in these views, I 
am a fixture. Write or telegraph (giving us time, how- 
ever, to telegraph in reply, lest the day be impossible), 
and come down here to a bed and a dinner. What do 
you say, my dear critic? I shall be truly pleased to see 
you; and to explain at greater length what I mean by 
saying narrative was the most characteristic mood of 
literature, on which point I have great hopes I shall per- 
suade you. — Yours truly, 

Egbert Louis Stevenson. 



^t. 34] EGBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 515 

[^t. 34] 

To William Archer 

["a terrible, but a very joyous and noble universe""] 
Skerryvore^ Bournemouth, November 1, 1885. 
Dear Mr. Archer, — 

You will see that I had already had a sight of your 
article and what were my thoughts. 

One thing in your letter puzzles me. Are you, too, not 
in the witness-box? And if you are, why take a wilfully 
false hypothesis? If you knew I was a chronic invalid, 
why say that my philosophy was unsuitable to such a 
case? My call for facts is not so general as yours, but 
an essential fact should not be put the other way about. 

The fact is, consciously or not, you doubt my honesty; 
you think I am making faces, and at heart disbelieve my 
utterances. And this I am disposed to think must spring 
from your not having had enough of pain, sorrow, and 
trouble in your existence. It is easy to have too much; 
easy also or possible to have too little; enough is required 
that a man may appreciate what elements of consolation 
and joy there are in everything but absolutely over- 
powering physical pain or disgrace, and how in almost all 
circumstances the human soul can play a fair part. You 
fear life, I fancy, on the principle of the hand of little 
employment. But perhaps my hypothesis is as unlike the 
truth as the one you chose. Well, if it be so, if you have 
had trials, sickness, the approach of death, the alienation 
of friends, poverty at the heels, and have not felt your 
soul turn round upon these things and spurn them under 
— you must be very differently made from me, and I 
earnestly believe from the majority of men. But at least 
you are in the right to wonder and complain. 

To "say all"? Stay here. All at once? That would 
require a word from the pen of Gargantua. We say each 
particular thing as it comes up, and "with that sort of 
emphasis that for the time there seems to be no other." 
Words will not otherwise serve us ; no, nor even Shake- 
speare, who could not have put As You Like It and Timon 
into one without ruinous loss both of emphasis and sub- 
stance. Is it quite fair then to keep your face so steadily 



^616 EGBERT LOUIS STEVENSON [^t. 34 

on my most light-hearted works, and then say I recognise 
no evil? Yet in the paper on Burns, for instance, I show 
myself alive to some sorts of evil. But then, perhaps, 
they are not your sorts. 

And again: to "say all?" All: yes. Everything: no. 
The task were endless, the effect nil. But my all, in such 
a vast field as this of life, is what interests me, what 
stands out, what takes on itself a presence for my imagi- 
nation or makes a figure in that little tricky abbreviation 
which is the best that my reason can conceive. That I 
must treat, or I shall be fooling with my readers. That, 
and not the all of some one else. 

And here we come to the division: not only do I be- 
lieve that literature should give joy, but I see a universe, 
I suppose, eternally different from yours; a solemn, a 
terrible, but a very joyous and noble universe, where suf- 
fering is not at least wantonly inflicted, though it falls 
with dispassionate partiality, but where it may be and 
generally is nobly borne; where, above all (this I believe; 
probably you don't: I think he may, with cancer), any 
hrave man may mal'e out a life which shall be happy for 
himself, and, by so being, beneficent to those about him. 
And if he fails, why should I hear him weeping? I mean 
if I fail, why should I weep? Why should you hear m,e? 
Then to me morals, the conscience, the affections, and 
the passions are, I will own frankly and sweepingly, so 
infinitely more important than the other parts of life, 
that I conceive men rather triflers who become immersed 
in the latter; and I will always think the man who keeps 
,his lip stiff", and makes "a happy fireside clime," and car- 
ries a pleasant face about to friends and neighbors, in- 
finitely greater (in the abstract) than an atrabilious 
Shakespeare or a backbiting Kant or Darwin. No offence 
to any of these gentlemeii, two of whom probably (one 
for certain) came up to my standard. 

And now enough said ; it were hard if a poor man could 
not criticise another without having so much ink shed 
against him. But I shall still regret you should have 
•:vritten oil an hypothesis you knew to be untenable, and 
that you should thus have made your paper, for those 
who do not know me, essentially unfair. The rich, fox- 



^t. 36] EOBEKT LOUIS STEVENSON 517 

hunting squire speaks with one voice; the sick man of 
letters with another. — Yours very truly, 

Egbert Louis Stevenson 
(Prometheus-Heine in minimis). 

P.8. — Here I go again. To me, the medicine bottles 
on my chimney and the blood on my handkerchief are 
accidents; they do not colour my view of life, as you 
would know, I think, if you had experience of sickness; 
they do not exist in my prospect; I would as soon drag 
them under the eyes of my readers as I would mention 
a pimple I might chance to have (saving your presence) 
on my posteriors. What does it prove? what does it 
change? it has not hurt, it has not changed me in any 
essential part; and I should think myself a trifler and in 
bad taste if I introduced the world to these unimportant 
privacies. 

But, again, there is this mountain-range between us — 
tliat you do not believe me. It is not flattering, but the 
fault is probably in my literary art. 



[^t. 36] 

To Henry James 
[life at saraxac] 

Saranac Lake, 1887. 
I know not the day; but the 
month it is the drear Oc- 
tober by the ghoul-haiinted 
woodland of Weir. 
My dear Henry James, — 

This is to say, First, the voyage was a huge success. 
We all enjoyed it (bar my wife) to the ground: sixteen 
days at sea with a cargo of hay, matches, stallions, and 
monkeys, and in a ship with no style on, and plenty of 
sailors to talk to, and the endless pleasures of the sea — 
the romance of it, the sport of the scratch dinner and the 
smashing crockery, the pleasure — an endless pleasure — 
of balancing to the swell: w^ell, it's over. 

Second, I had a fine time, rather a troubled one, at 
Newport and New York; saw much of and liked hugely 



518 KOBEET LOUIS STEVENSON [.Et. 36 

the Fairchilds, St. Gaudens the sculptor, Gilder of the 
Century — just saw the dear Alexander — saw a lot of my 
old and admirable friend Will Low, whom I wish you 
knew and appreciated — was medallioned by St. Gaudens, 
and at last escaped to 

Third, Saranac Lake, where we now are, and which I 
believe we mean to like and pass the winter at. Our 
house — emphatically "Baker's" — is on a hill, and has a 
sight of a stream turning a corner in the valley — bless 
the face of running water! — and sees some hills too, and 
the paganly prosaic roofs of Saranac itself; the Lake it 
does not see, nor do. I regret that; I like water (fresh 
water I mean) either running swiftly among stones, or 
else largely qualified with whisky. As I write, the sun 
(which has been long a stranger) shines in at my shoul- 
der; from the next room, the bell of Lloyd's typewriter 
makes an agreeable music as it patters off (at a rate which 
astonishes this experienced novelist) the early chapters 
of a humorous romance; from still further off — the walls 
of Baker's are neither ancient nor massive — rumours of 
Valentine about the kitchen stove come to my ears; of 
my mother and Fanny I hear nothing, for the excellent 
reason that they have gone sparking off, one to Niagara, 
one to Indianapolis. People complain that I never give 
news in my letters. I have wiped out that reproach. 

But now, Fourth, I have seen the article; and it may 
be from natural partiality, I think it the best you have 
written. .0 — I remember the Gautier, which was an ex- 
cellent performance; and the Balzac, which was good; 
and the Daudet, over which I licked my chops; but the 
R. L. S. is better yet. It is so humorous, and it hits my 
little frailties, with so neat (and so friendly) a touch; 
and Alan is the occasion for so much happy talk, and the 
quarrel is so generously praised. I read it twice, though 
it was only some hours in my possession; and Low, who 
got it for me from the Century, sat up to finish it ere 
he returned it; and, sir, we were all delighted. Here is 
the paper out, nor will anything, not even friendship, not 
even gratitude for the article, induce me to begin a sec- 
ond sheet ; so here with the kindest remembrances and the 
warmest good wishes, I remain, yours affectionately, 

R. L. S. 



^t. 37] KOBEKT LOUIS STEVENSON 519 

[^t. 37] 

To William Archer 
["cutting the i'lesh off" stories] 

[Saranac Lake, February, 1888.] 
My dear Archer, — 

PrettJ^ sick in bed; but necessary to protest and con- 
tinue your education. 

Why was Jenkin an amateur in my eyes? You think 
because not amusing (I think he often was amusing). 
The reason is this: I never, or almost never, saw two 
pages of his work that I could not have put in one with- 
out the smallest loss of material. That is the only test I 
know of writing. If there is anywhere a thing said in 
two sentences that could have been as clearly and as en- 
gagingly and as forcibly said in one, then it's amateur 
work. Then you will bring me up with old Dumas. Nay, 
the object of a story is to be long, to fill up hours; the 
story-teller's art of writing is to water out by continual 
invention, historical and technical, and yet not seem to 
water; seem on the other hand to practise that same wit 
of conspicuous and declaratory condensation which is the 
proper art of writing. That is one thing in which my 
stories fail : I am always cutting the flesh off their bones. 

I would rise from the dead to preach! 

Hope all well. I think my wife better, but she's not 
allowed to write; and this (only wrung from me by de- 
sire to Boss and Parsonise and Dominate, strong in sick- 
ness) is my first letter for days, and will likely be my 
last for many more. Not* blame my wife for her silence : 
doctor's orders. All much interested by your last, and 
fragment from brother, and anecdotes of Tomarcher. — 
The sick but still Moral 

R. L. S. 

Tell Shaw to hurry up: I want another. 



520 KOBEET LOUIS STEVENSON [JEt 38 

[iEt. 38] 

To Thomas Archer 
[to a boy] • 
Tautira, Island of Tahiti [November, 1888]. 
Dear Tomarcher, — 

This is a pretty state of things! seven o'clock and no 
word of breakfast! And I was awake a good deal last 
night, for it was full moon, and they had made a great 
fire of cocoanut husks down by the sea, and as we have 
no blinds or shutters, this kept my room very bright. And 
then the rats had a wedding or a school-feast under my 
bed. And then I woke early, and I have nothing to read 
except Virgil's ^neid, which is not good fun on an empty 
stomach, and a Latin dictionary, which is good for 
naught, and by some humorous accident, your dear papa's 
article on Skerryvore. And I read the whole of that, and 
very impudent it is, but you must not tell your dear papa 
I said so, or it might come to a battle in which you might 
lose either a dear papa or a valued correspondent, or both, 
which would be prodigal. And still no breakfast; so I 
said "Let's write to Tomarcher." 

This is a much better place for children than any I 
have hitherto seen in these seas. The girls (and some- 
times the boys) play a very elaborate kind of hopscotch. 
The boys play horses exactly as we do in Europe; and 
have very good fun on stilts trying to knock each other 
down, in which they do not often succeed. The children 
of all ages go to church and are allowed to do what they 
please, running about the aisles, rolling balls, stealing 
mamma's bonnet and publicly sitting on it, and at last 
going to sleep in the middle of the floor. I forgot to say 
that the whips to play horses, and the balls to roll about 
the church — at least I never saw them used elsewhere — 
grow ready-made on trees; which is rough on toy-shops. 
The whips are so good that I wanted to play horses my- 
self ; but no such luck ! my hair is grey, and I am a great, 
big, ugly man. The balls are rather hard, but very light 
and quite round. When you grow up and become of- 
fensively rich, you can charter a ship in the port of Lon- 
don, and have it come back to you entirely loaded with 
these balls ; when you could satisfy your mind as to their 



.Et 38] ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 521 

character, and give them away when done with to your 
uncles and aunts. But what I really wanted to tell you 
was this: besides the tree-top toys (Hush-a-by, toy-shop, 
on the tree-top!), I have seen some real made toys, the 
first hitherto observed in the South Seas. 

This was how. You are to imagine a four-wheeled gig; 
one horse; in the front seat two Tahiti natives, in their 
Sunday clothes, blue coat, white shirt, kilt (a little longer 
than the Scotch) of a blue stuif with big white or yellow 
flowers, legs and feet bare; in the back seat me and my 
wife, who is a friend of yours; under our feet, plenty of 
lunch and things : among us a great deal of fun in broken 
Tahitian, one of the natives, the sub-chief of the village, 
being a great ally of mine. Indeed we have exchanged 
names; so that he is now called Rui, the nearest they can 
come to Louis, for they have no I and no s in their lan- 
guage. Rui is six feet three in his stockings, and a mag- 
nificent man. We all have straw hats, for the sun is 
strong. We drive between the sea, which makes a great 
noise, and the mountains ; the road is cut through a forest 
mostly of fruit trees, the very creepers, which take the 
place of our ivy, heavy with a great and delicious fruit, 
bigger than your head and far nicer, called Barbedine. 
Presently we came to a house in a pretty garden, quite 
by itself, very nicely kept, the doors and windows open, 
no one about, and no noise but that of the sea. It looked 
like a house in a fairy tale, and just beyond we must ford 
a river, and there we saw the inhabitants. Just in the 
mouth of the river, where it met the sea waves, they were 
ducking and bajthing and screaming together like a covey 
of birds: seven or eight little naked brown boys and girls 
as happy as the day was long; and on the banks of the 
stream beside them, real toys — toy ships, full rigged, and 
with their sails set, though they were lying in the dust 
on their beam ends. And then I knew for sure they were 
all children in a fairy story, living alone together in that 
lonely house with the only toys in all the island ; and that 
I had myself driven, in my four-wheeled gig, into a cor- 
ner of the fairy story, and the question was, should I get 
out again? But it was all right; I guess only one of the 
wheels of the gig had got into the fairy story; and the 
next jolt the whole thing vanished', and we drove on in 



522 ROBEKT LOUIS STEVENSON [.^t. 38 

our seaside forest as before, and I have the honour to be 
Tomarcher's valued correspondent, TERIITERA, which 
he was previously known as 

Robert Louis. Stevenson. 



[iEt. 38] 

To Sidney Colvin 
[visit to molokai; father damien] 

[Honolulu, May or June, 1889]. 
My dear Colvin, — 

I am just home after twelve days' journey to Molokai, 
seven of them at the leper settlement, where I can only 
say that the sight of so much courage, cheerfulness, and 
devotion strung me too high to mind the infinite pity and 
horror of the sights. I used to ride over from Kalawao 
to Kalaupapa (about three miles across the promontory, 
the cliff-wall, ivied with forest and yet inaccessible from 
steepness, on my left), go to the sister's home, which is a 
miracle of neatness, play a game of croquet with seven 
leper girls (90° in the shade), get a little old-maid meal 
served me by the sisters, and ride home again, tired 
enough, but not too tired. The girls have all dolls, and 
love dressing them. You who know so many ladies deli- 
cately clad, and they who know so many dressmakers, 
please make it known it would be an acceptable gift to 
send scraps for doll dressmaking to the Reverend Sister 
Maryanne, Bishop Home, Kalaupapa Molokai, Hawaiian 
Islands. 

I have seen sights that cannot be told, and heard stories 
that cannot be repeated: yet I never admired my poor 
race so much, nor (strange as it may seem) loved life 
more than in the settlement. A horror of moral beauty 
broods over the place: that's like bad Victor Hugo, but 
it is the only way I can express the sense that lived with 
me all these days. And this even though it was in great 
part Catholic, and my sympathies flew never with so much 
difficulty as towards Catholic virtues. The pass-book kept 
with heaven stirs me to anger and laughter. One of the 
sisters calls the place "the ticket office to heaven." Well, 
what is the odds? They do their darg, and do it with 



^t. 38] ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 523 

kindness and efficiency incredible; and we must take folk's 
virtues as we find them, and love the better part. Of old 
Damien, whose weaknesses and worse perhaps I heard 
fully, I think only the more. It was a European peasant : 
dirty, bigotted, untruthful, unwise, tricky, but superb 
with generosity, residual candour and fundamental good- 
humour: convince him he had done wrong (it might take 
hours of insult) and he would undo what he had done 
and like his corrector better. A man, with all the grime 
and paltriness of mankind, but a saint and hero all the 
more for that. The place as regards scenery is grand, 
gloomy, and bleak. Mighty mountain walls descending 
sheer along the whole face of the island into a sea un- 
usually deep; the front of the mountain ivied and furred 
with clinging forest, one viridescent cliff: about half-way 
from east to west, the low, bare, stony promontory edged 
in between the cliff and the ocean; the two little towns 
(Kalawao and Kalaupapa) seated on either side of it, as 
bare almost as bathing machines upon a beach; and the 
population — gorgons and chimseras dire. All this tear 
of the nerves I bore admirably; and the day after I gofe 
away, rode twenty miles along the opposite coast and up 
into the mountains: they call it twenty, I am doubtful of 
the figures: I should guess it nearer twelve; but let me 
take credit for what residents allege; and I was riding 
again the day after, so I need say no more about health. 
Honolulu does not agree with me at all : I am always out 
of sorts there, with slight headache, blood to the head, 
etc. I had a good deal of work to do and did it with 
miserable difficulty ; and yet all the time I \m\e been gain- 
ing strength, as you see, which is highly encouraging. By 
the time I am done with this cruise I shall have the ma- 
terial for a very singular book of travels : names of strange 
stories and characters, cannibals, pirates, ancient legends, 
old Polynesian poetry, — never was so generous a farrago. 
I am going down now to get the story of a shipwrecked 
family, who were fifteen months on an island with a 
murderer: there is a specimen. The Pacific is a strange 
place; the nineteenth century only exists there in spots: 
all around, it is a no man's land of the ages, a stir-about 
of epochs and races, barbarisms and civilisations, virtues 
and crimes. 



524 KOBEET LOUIS STEVENSON [^t. 40 

It is good of you to let me stay longer, but if I had 
known how ill you were, I should be now on my way 
home. I had chartered my schooner and made all ar- 
rangements before (at last) we got definite news. I feel 
highly guilty; I should be back to insult and worry you 
a little. Our address till further notice is to be c/o R. 
Towns and Co., Sydney. That is final: I only got the 
arrangement made yesterday; but you may now publish 
it abroad. — Yours ever, 

R. L. S. 

[^t. 40] 

To Henry James 
[kipling's "debauch of production"] 

Vailima, Apia, Samoa, 
December 29th, 1890. 
My dear Henry James, — 

. . . Kipling is by far the most promising young man 
who has appeared since — ahem — I appeared. He amazes 
me by his precocity and various endowment. But he 
alarms me by his copiousness and haste. He should 
shield his fire with both hands "and draw up all his 
strength and sweetness in one ball!" ("Draw all his 
strength and all His sweetness up into one ball?" I can- 
not remember Marvell's words.) So the critics have been 
saying to me; but I was never capable of — and surely 
never guilty of — such a debauch of production. At this 
rate his works will soon fill the habitable globe ; and surely 
he was armed for better conflicts than these succinct 
sketches and flying leaves of verse? I look on, I admire, 
I rejoice for myself; but in a kind of ambition we all 
have for our tongue and literature I am wounded. If I 
had this man's fertility and courage, it seems to me I 
could heave a pyramid. 



JEt. 40] EGBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 525 

[^t. 40] 

To Mr. Ide 
[transferring a birthday] 

[Vailima, June 19, 1891.] 
Dear Mr. Ide, 

Herewith please find the DOCUMENT, which I trust 
will prove sufficient in law. It seems to me very attrac- 
tive in its eclecticism; Scots, English, and Roman law 
phrases are all indifferently introduced, and a quotation 
from the works of Haynes Bailey can hardly fail to at- 
tract the indulgence of the Bench. — Yours very truly, 

Robert Louis Stevenson. 

I, Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate of the Scots Bar, 
author of The Master of Ballantrae and Moral Emhlems, 
stuck civil engineer, sole owner and patentee of the Palace 
and Plantation known as Vailima in the island of L^polu, 
Samoa, a British subject, being in sound mind, and pretty 
well, I thank you, in body: 

• In consideration that Miss Annie H, Ide, daughter of 
H. C. Ide, in the town of St. Johnsbury, in the county 
of Caledonia, in the state of Vermont, United States of 
America, was born, out of all reason, upon Christmas 
Day, and is therefore out of all justice denied the conso- 
lation and profit of a proper birthday; 

And considering that I, the said Robert Louis Steven- 
son, have attained an age when O, we never mention it, 
and that I have now no further use for a birthday of any 
description ; 

And in consideration that I have met H. C. Ide, the 
father of the said Annie H. Ide, and found him about as 
white a land commissioner as I require: 

Have transferred, and do hereby transfer, to the said 
Annie 11. Ide, all and whole my rights and privileges in 
the thirteenth day of November, formerly my birthday, 
now, hereby, and henceforth, the birthday of the said An- 
nie H. Ide, to have, hold, exercise, and enjoy the same in 
the customary manner, by the sporting of fine raiment, 
eating of rich meats, and receipt of gifts, compliments, 
and copies of verse, according to the manner of our an- 
cestors ; 



526 EGBERT LOUIS STEVENSON [^t. 41 

And I direct the said Annie H. Ide to add to the said 
name of Annie H. Ide the name Louisa — at least in pri- 
vate; and I charge her to use my said birthday with mod- 
eration and humanity, et tamquam bona filia familia, the 
said birthday not being so young as it once was, and 
having carried me in a very satisfactory manner since I 
can remember; 

And in case the said Annie H. Ide shall neglect or 
contravene either of the above conditions, I hereby re- 
voke the donation and transfer my rights in the said 
birthday to the President of the United States of America 
for the time being: 

In witness whereof I have hereto set my hand and seal 
this nineteenth day of June in the j'ear of grace eighteen 
hundred and ninety-one. 




Egbert Louis Stevenson. 
Witness, Lloyd Osbourne, 
Witness, Harold Watts. 



[^t. 41] 

To Miss Annie H. Ide 
[his "name-daughter"] 

VailimA;, Samoa [November, 1891]. 
My dear Louisa, — 

Your picture of the church, the photograph of your- 
self and your sister, and your very witty and pleasing 
letter, came all in a bundle, and made me feel I had my 
money's worth for that birthday. I am now, I must be, 
one of your nearest relatives; exactly what we are to each 
other, I do not know, I doubt if the case has ever hap- 
pened before — your papa ought to know, and I don't be- 
lieve he does; but I think I ought to call you in the 
meanwhile, and until we get the advice of counsel learned 
in the law, my name-daughter. Well, I was extremely 
pleased to see by the church that my name-daughter could 



^t. 41] ROBEKT LOUIS STEVENSON 527 

draw; by the letter, that she was no fool; and by the pho- 
tograph, that she was a pretty girl, which hurts nothing. 
See how virtues are rewarded ! My first idea of adopting 
you was entirely charitable; and here I find that I am 
quite proud of it, and of you, and that I chose just the 
kind of name-daughter I wanted. For I can draw too, 
or rather I mean to say I could before I forgot how; and 
I am very far from being a fool myself, however much I 
may look it; and I am as beautiful as the day, or at least 
I once hoped that perhaps I might be going to be. And 
so I might. So that you see we are well met, and peers 
on these important points. I am very glad also that you 
are older than your sister. So should I have been, if I 
had had one. So that the number of points and virtues 
which you have inherited from your name-father is al- 
ready quite surprising. 

I wish you would tell your father — not that I like to 
encourage my rival — that we have had a wonderful time 
here of late, and that they are having a cold day on 
Mulinuu, and the consuls are writing reports, and I am 
writing to the Times, and if we don't get rid of our 
friends this time I shall begin to despair of everything 
but my name-daughter. 

You are quite wrong as to the effect of the birthday on 
your age. From the moment the deed was registered (as 
it was in the public press with every solemnity), the 13th 
of November became your own and only birthday, and you 
ceased to have been born on Christmas Day. Ask your 
father: I am sure he will tell you this is sound law. You 
are thus become a month and twelve days younger than 
you were, but will go on growing older for the future in 
the regular and human manner from one 13th November 
to the next. The effect on me is more doubtful ; I may, 
as you suggest, live for ever; I might, on the other hand, 
come to pieces like the one-horse shay at a moment's no- 
tice; doubtless the step was risky, but I do not the least 
regret that which enables me to sign myself your revered 
and delighted name-father, 

Robert Louis Stevenson. 



628 KOBEKT LOUIS STEVENSON [^t. 42 

[^t. 42] 

To James Payn 
["continual spasms of cannon"; piquet] 

Vailima, Upolu, Samoa [August, 1893]. 
My dear James Payn, — 

I hear from Lang that you are unwell, and it reminds 
me of two circumstances: First, that it is a very long 
time since you had the exquisite pleasure of hearing from 
me; and second, that I have been very often unwell my- 
self, and sometimes had to thank you for a grateful ano- 
dyne. 

They are not good, the circumstances, to write an 
anodyne letter. The hills and my house at less than 
(boom) a minute's interval quake with thunder; and 
though I cannot hear that part of it, shells are falling 
thick into the fort of Lotoanuu (boom). It is my friend 
of the Curagoa, the Adler, and the Bussard bombarding 
(after all these-boom-months) the rebels of Atua. (Boom- 
boom.) It is most distracting in itself; and the thought 
of the poor devils in their fort (boom) with their bits of 
rifles far from pleasant. (Boom-boom.) You can see 
how quick it goes, and I'll say no more about Mr. Bow- 
wow, only you must understand the perpetual accompani- 
ment of this discomfortable sound, and make allowances 
for the value of my copy. It is odd, though, I can well 
remember when the Franco-Prussian war began, and I 
was in Eilean Earraid, far enough from the sound of the 
loudest cannonade, I could hear the shots fired, and I felt 
the pang in my breast of a man struck. It was some- 
times so distressing, so instan»t, that I lay in the heather 
on the top of the island, with my face hid, kicking my 
heels for agony. And now, when I can hear the actual 
concussions of the air and hills, when I hnow personally 
the people who stand exposed to it, I am able to go on 
tant hien que mal with a letter to James Payn! The 
blessings of age, though mighty small, are tangible. I 
have heard a great deal of them since I came into the 
world, and now that I begin to taste of them — Well ! But 
this is one, that people do get cured of the excess of sensi- 
bility; and I had as lief these people were shot at as my- 



^t 42] EGBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 529 

self — or almost, for then I should have some of the fun, 
such as it is. 

You are to conceive me, then, sitting in my little gal- 
lery room, shaken by these continual spasms of cannon, 
and with my eye more or less singly fixed on the imagi- 
nary figure of my dear James Payn. I try to see him in 
bed; no go. I see him instead jumping up in his room 
in Waterloo Place (where ex hypotkesi he is not), sitting 
on the table, drawing out a very black briar-root pipe, 
and beginning to talk to a slim and ill-dressed visitor in 
a voice that is good to hear and with a smile that is 
pleasant to see. (After a little more than half an hour, 
the voice that was ill to hear has ceased, the cannonade 
is over.) And I am thinking how I can get an answer- 
ing smile wafted over so many leagues of land and water, 
and can find no way. 

I have always been a great visitor of the sick; and one 
of the sick I visited was W. E. Henley, which did not 
make very tedious visits, so I'll not get oif much purga- 
tory for them. That was in the Edinburgh Infirmary, 
the old one, the true one, with Georgius Secundus stand- 
ing and pointing his toe in a niche of the fagade; and a 
mighty fine building it was! And I remember one win- 
ter's afternoon, in that place of misery, that Henley and 
I chanced to fall in talk about James Payn himself. I 
am wishing that you could have heard that talk ! I think 
that would make you smile. We had mixed you up with 
John Payne, for one thing, and stood amazed at your 
extraordinary, even painful, versatility; and for another, 
we found ourselves each students so well prepared for 
examinations on the novels of the real Mackay. Perhaps, 
after all, this is worth something in life — to have given 
so much pleasure to a pair so different in every way as 
were Henley and I, and to be talked of with so much in- 
terest by two such (beg pardon) clever lads! 

The cheerful Lang has neglected to tell me what is the 
matter with you; so, I'm sorry to say, I am cut off from 
all the customary consolations. I can't say, "Think -how 
much worse it would be if you had a broken leg!" when 
you may have the crushing repartee up your sleeve, "But 
it is my leg that is broken." This is a pity. But there 
are consolations. You are an Englishman (I believe) ; 



530 KOBEET LOUIS STEVENSON [^A. 43 

you are a man of letters; you have never been made 
C.B.; your hair was not red; you have played cribbage 
and whist; you did not play either the fiddle or the banjo; 

you were never an aesthete; you never contributed to 

Journal; your name is not Jabez Balfour; you are totally 
unconnected with the Army and Navy departments; I 
understand you to have lived within your income — why, 
cheer up ! here are many legitimate causes of congratu- 
lation. I seem to be writing an obituary notice. Ahsit 
omen! But I feel very sure that these considerations 
will have done you more good than medicine. 

By the by, did you ever play piquet? I have fallen a 
victim to this debilitating game. It is supposed to be 
scientific; God save the mark, what self -deceivers men 
are ! It is distinctly less so than cribbage. But how 
fascinating! There is such material opulence about it, 
such vast ambitions may be realised — and are not; it may 
be called the Monte Cristo of games. And the thrill with 
which you take five cards partakes of the nature of lust — 
and you draw four sevens and a nine, and the seven and 
nine of a suit that you discarded, and O ! but the world 
is a desert ! You may see traces of discouragement in 
my letter : all due to piquet ! There has been a disastrous 
turn of the luck against me; a month or two ago I was 
two thousand ahead; now, and for a week back, I have 
been anything from four thousand eight hundred to five 
thousand two hundred astern. If I have a sixieme, my 
beast of a partner has a septieme; and if I have three 
aces, three kings, three queens, and three knaves (excuse 
the slight exaggeration), the devil holds quatorze of tens! 
— I remain, my dear James Payn, your sincere and obliged 
friend — old friend let me say, 

Egbert Louis Stevenson. 

[^t. 43] 

To George Meredith 
["gower woodsere"] 

Vailima, Samoa, April 17th, 1894. 
My dear Meredith, — 

Many good things have the gods sent to me of late. 
First of all there was a letter from you by the kind hand 



^t. 43] EGBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 581 

of Mariette, if she is not too great a lady to be remem- 
bered in such a style; and then there came one Lysagh: 
with a charming note of introduction in the well-known 
hand itself. We had but a few days of him, and liked 
him well. There was a sort of geniality and inward fire 
about him at which I warmed my hands. It is long since 
I have seen a young man who has left in me such a fa- 
vourable impression ; and I find myself telling myself, '^O, 
I must tell this to Lysaght/' or, "This will interest him," 
in a manner very unusual after so brief an acquaintance. 
The whole of my family shared in this favourable im- 
pression, and my halls have re-echoed ever since, I am 
sure he will be amused to know% with Widdicomhe Fair. 

He will have told you doubtless more of my news than 
I could tell you myself; he has your European perspec- 
tive, a thing long lost to me. I heard with a great deal 
of interest the news of Box Hill. And so I understand 
it is to be enclosed! Allow me to remark, that seems a 
far more barbaric trait of manners than the most bar- 
barous of ours. We content ourselves with cutting off an 
occasional head. 

I hear we may soon expect the Amazing Marriage. You 
know how long, and with how much curiosity, I have 
looked forward to the book. Now, in so far as you have 
adhered to your intention, Gower Woodsere will be a 
family portrait, age twenty-five, of the highly respectable 
and slightly influential and fairly aged Tusiiala. You 
have not known that gentleman; console yourself, he is 
not worth knowing. At the same time, my dear Mere- 
dith, he is very sincerely yours — for what he is worth, for 
the memories of old times, and in the expectation of 
many pleasures still to come. I suppose we shall never 
see each other again ; flitting youths of the Lysaght species 
may occasionally cover these unconscionable leagues and 
bear greetings to and fro. But we ourselves must be con- 
tent to converse on an occasional sheet of notepaper, and 
I shall never see whether you have grown older, and you 
shall never deplore that Gower Woodsere should have de- 
clined into the pantaloon Tnsitala. It is perhaps better 
so. Let us continue to see each other as we were, and 
accept, my dear Meredith, my love and respect. 

Robert Louis Stevenson. 



532 EGBERT LOUIS STEVENSON [iEt. 44 

[^t. 44] 

To Edmund Gosse * 

["l WAS NOT BORN FOR AGe"] 

Vailima, Samoa, December 1, 1894. 

I am afraid, my dear Weg, that this must be the result 
of bribery and corruption! The volume to which the 
dedication stands as preface seems to me to stand alone 
in your work; it is so natural, so personal, so sincere, so 
articulate in substance, and what you always were sure 
of — so rich in adornment. 

Let me speak first of the dedication. I thank you for 
it from my heart. It is beautifully said, beautifully and 
kindly felt; and I should be a churl indeed if I were not 
grateful, and an ass if I were not proud. I remember 
when Symonds dedicated a book to me; I wrote and told 
him of "the pang of gratified vanity" with which I had 
read it. The pang was present again, but how much more 
sober and autumnal — like your volume. Let me tell you 
a story, or remind you of a story. In the year of grace 
something or other, anything between '76 and '78, I men- 
tioned to you in my usual autobiographical and incon- 
siderate manner that I was hard up. You said promptly 
that you had a balance at your banker's, and could make 
it convenient to let me have a cheque, and I accepted and 
got the money — how much was it? — twenty, or perhaps 
thirty pounds? I know not — but it was a great conve- 
nience. The same evening, or the next day, I fell in con- 
.versation (in my usual autobiographical and . . . see 
above) with a denizen of the Savile Club, name now gone 
from me, only his figure and a dim three-quarter view of 
his face remaining. To him I mentioned that you had 
given me a loan, remarking easily that of course it 
didn't matter to you. Whereupon he read me a lecture, 
and told me how it really stood with you financially. He 
was pretty serious, fearing, as I could not help perceiving, 
that I should take too light a view of the responsibility 
and the service (I was always thought too light — the irre- 
sponsible jester — you remember. 0, quantum mutatus ah 
illo!) If I remember rightly, the money was repaid be- 

* Stevenson died two days after the date of this letter. 



^t. 44] EOBEKT LOUIS STEVENSON 533 

fore the end of the week — or, to be more exact and a 
trifle pedantic, the sennight — but the service has never 
been forgotten; and I send you back this piece of ancient 
history, consule Planco, as a salute for your dedication, 
q,nd propose that we should drink the health of the name- 
less one who opened my eyes as to the true nature of 
what you did for me on that occasion. 

But here comes my Amanuensis, so we'll get on more 
swimmingly now. You will understand perhaps that 
what so particularly pleased me in the new volume, what 
seems to me to have so personal and original a note, are 
the middle-aged pieces in the beginning. The whole of 
them, I may say, though I must own an especial liking 
to— 

I yearn not for the fighting fate, 

That holds and hath achieved; 

I live to watch and meditate 

And dream — and be deceived. 

You take the change gallantly. Not I, I must confess. 
It is all very well to talk of renunciation, and of course 
it has to be done. But, for my jDart, give me a roaring 
toothache! I do like to be deceived and to dream, but I 
have very little use for either watching or meditation. I 
was not born for age. And, curiously enough, I seem to 
see a contrary drift in my work from that which is so re- 
markable in yours. You are going on sedately travelling 
through your ages, decently changing with the years to 
the proper tune. And here am I, quite out of my true 
course, and with nothing in my foolish elderly head but 
love-stories. This must repose upon some curious dis- 
tinction of temperaments. I gather from a phrase, boldly 
autobiographical, that you are — well, not precisely grow- 
ing thin. Can that be the difference? 

It is rather funny that this matter should come up 
just now, as I am at present engaged in treating a severe 
case of middle age in one of my stories — The Justice- 
ClerTi. The case is that of a woman, and I think that I 
am doing her justice. You will be interest?ed, I believe, 
to see the difference in our treatments. Secreta Vitce 
comes nearer to the case of my poor Kirstie. Come to 
think of it, Gosse, I believe the main distinction is that 



534 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON [^Et. 44 

you have a family growing up around you, and I am a 
childless, rather bitter, very clear-eyed, blighted youth. 
I have, in fact, lost the path that makes it easy and natu- 
ral for you to descend the hill. I am going at it straight. 
And where I have to go down it is a precipice. 

I must not forget to give you a word of thanks for An 
English Village. It reminds me strongly of Keats, which 
is enough to say; and I was particularly pleased with the 
petulant sincerity of the concluding sentiment. 

Well, my dear Gosse, here's wishing you all health and 
prosperity, as well as to the mistress and the bairns. May 
you live long, since it seems as if you would continue to 
enjoy life. May you write many more books as good as 
this one — only there's one thing impossible, you can never 
write another dedication that can give the same pleasure 
to the vanished 

TUSITALA. 



APPENDIX 

Benjamin Clough to Asa Clough 
[murder at sea] 
On Board Ship Sharon, of Fairhaven. 
At Sea, Thursday, Feb. 9, 1843. 
A favorable chance having presented itself, I embrace 
it to write you a few lines. After my last at Brava, we 
shaped our course for St. Paul's Island where we arrived 
making a quick passage. We stopped here a few hours 
and I went ashore in the boat. We pulled into a small 
basin on the east side of the island, which is supposed to 
have been the crater of a burning mountain, having boil- 
ing springs on the beach where you can catch a fish and 
heave him over your head into the spring, where he will 
be cooked and salted in a few minutes, the water being 
salt. We saw a few hogs, but too far distant to be got 
at with ease. There is nothing grows on the island but 
Scurvy-grass. We saw the grave of the mate of the 
Aeronaut of New London (Mystic), who was killed near 
this island by a whale in 1837. We caught a few fish 
and went on board, pulling past a great number of 
Wright Whales. We then shaped our course for Copang, 
where we arrived Oct. 26, dropped anchor and lay three 
days, but finding nothing to be got but water. A few 
Dutch here, and a thing by the name of Fort, but not 
much more. Some Chinese and the rest Malays. The 
Chinese have a Temple here and the Malays a Mosque, 
which are of not much account. After we left here, we 
passed through the Straits of Timor Bunda Sea, Pitt's 
Passage, Lokisang Channel, and Gillot's Passage into the 
Pacific Ocean, seeing Sperm Whales once in the Straits, 
but got none, three of our boat steerers having missed. 
We then started for Pleasant Island on the Equator in 
Long. 167, 20 E., the place of our destination. I would 
here observe that Capt. Norris has been frequently beat- 
ing the steward, Geo. Babcock, a mullato belonging at 

535 



536 APPENDIX 

Newport, R. I., in the most barbarous manner. On the 
12th Dec. 1841 I heard the Steward say, "O Sir, you wil] 
kill me," and the mate went down and the Capt. came 
on deck and ordered him put in the rigging whare he 
gave him 2 dozen with the double part of 18 yarn, cut 
him down, and ordered him to go to his duty again. About 
7 p.m. the bell rang for the steward but he not coming 
the mate went forward and sung out for him, when one 
of the men sung out that he was not coming until he was 
used better. He was then brought out by force and 8 of 
the crew put in irons. 2 of them were then seized up 
and given 2 dozen a piece and the rest, promising to do 
better, were all sent to their duty again. 

We then went back on our cruising ground and cruised 
the season, having very bad luck, the Captain beating the 
Steward as usual. We then started for Rotumah and 
April 7th let go Anchor. We lay here and took in wood 
and water and 9 of our men left. We shipped 2 White 
men, 4 Kanakas, 2 Rotumah men, 1 Ocean and 1 Hope 
Islander, the last two being left here by other ships. We 
then started for our ground again and at Hope Island 
got more Natives. 

This season the Devil appears to have entered our Cap- 
tain with double force. About the middle of June the 
Steward he burnt his foot to blister all over. I would 
add that after we left Rotumah he was turned out of the 
cabin and put in cook, he not being allowed to leave the 
ship. At the time he scalt his foot, he was reduced to 
almost a Skeleton. Sometimes his eyes swelled so that 
he could not see, and the blood and corruption running 
from all parts of his body, the skin hanging in great 
flakes on his foot. Some times he would make him mix 
Meal in a Kid and set it on deck and eat raw meal with 
the Hogs. The 4th of July he gave him 7 dozen on the 
back, one on the head and one on the feet, he being made 
what is called Spread Eagle, that is, he being tied by the 
rists so that his feet could not touch and his legs seized 
out taut each way. The rope used was hemp whale line. 
From the first of July to the first of September he beat 
him almost every day, using any weapon that came to 
hand and making him rub the plank when there was any 
bunches in them until his Knees were worn nearly to 



APPENDIX 537 

the bone and his foot a mass of corruption. He then 
undertook to cure them but whenever he dressed them he 
would stamp on them and kick him in the face until the 
blood would stream from his mouth and nose and then 
make him stuff up his nose with Oakum. 

On the 1 of September he came on deck in the morn- 
ing, sung out for the Steward as usual, which was, where 
are you, you damned Nigger you, and set him to oiling 
a couple of brass guns that stood aft, when the Capt. was 
informed that he had some Meat the night before, which 
he had not. He then got his rope and gave him a terrible 
flogging acrost the back as he was bending over oiling 
the guns. At 7.30 we got breakfast. After breakfast he 
got some salve to put on his wounds, and gave a great 
many kicks as usual in the temples. He told him to go 
draw a tub of water in the waist. He got up to go and 
stumbled a number of times from the Mizzen mast to the 
waist. It was with great difficulty that he could draw a 
bucket of water, which the captain seeing, came with a 
rope and kept flogging him over the back. After he got 
the water drawn he told him to get some sand and go to 
scouring, which he started to do and stumbled from Star- 
board to Larboard side, where he fell. The Capt. began 
to beat him with the rope to make him get up. He tried 
a number of times by getting hold of things and kept 
stumbling until he came to the cheptree where he fell to 
rise no more, Capt. Norris beating him all the time and 
he saying Oh Capt. — / am dying. He was sewed up in 
a blanket with his bloody clothes on and at sunset hove 
overboard. 

The Captain has often said he would kill him in de- 
fiance of everything, and when he was beating him he 
say he expected tq go to Hell for him and the day he 
killed him he told him he need not be afraid of going to 
Hell as they would kick him out of that. So ends as 
cold-blooded a murder as was ever recorded, being about 
eight months taking his life. 

One of our men that we shipped at Rotumah when we 
were at Pleasant Island got into a canoe to desert when 
he was discovered and ordered on deck. When he got 
there the Captain catched him by the collar and the man 
catched hold of his shirt, the man being drunk, when 



538 APPENDIX 

the Captain sung out for help and he was tied hand and 
foot with spun yarn. He then choked him and kicked 
him in the face, and the man said if he ever got loose he 
would take his life. The Captain ordered him to be put 
into a canoe but we afterwards learned that he never 
reached the shore. This was before the Steward was 
killed. 

Our Captain was also in the habit of pounding the 
Kanakas also. After the season was out we went to 
Ascension in Lat. 6.20 North, Long. 158.30 E. Whilst 
we lay there recruiting the Captain kept drunk. 12 men 
left us here, saying they would not sail with a Murderer. 

Oct. 27, 1842, we left Ascension for New Zealand to 
get men, the Captain keeping drunk nearly all the time 
and beating the Kanakas, we having 6 of them on board 
and but 11 of the rest of us. Nov. 5 we raised sperm 
whales and lowered two boats, leaving the Captain, stew- 
ard and 3 natives on board, the Captain about half drunk. 
We struck a whale and killed him and continued chasing 
the School when we saw the colors at the main-top-gallant 
head set at half mast. We then pulled for the ship, when 
the man who was at Mast head said that the natives had 
killed the Captain and got possession of the ship, haveing 
the Cutting Spades, Harpoons, Lances, Wood, Bone be- 
laying Pins, Hammers, etc., to keep the boats off. We 
then told the Steward to cut the halliards and let the 
Sails run down to stop the Ship's headway. We then 
pulled up to the Ship. They threw an axe into the Boat, 
wood, etc., so that we could not come near the ship with- 
out the loss of lives, the Natives keeping watch of each 
Boat with long spades in their hands and one at the 
wheel, the Sun being about 3 minutes high. Soon as it 
begun to grow dark we pulled out ahead of the Ship and 
I took a Boat knife in my mouth to keep oif the Sharks, 
there being plenty around. I got overboard and silently 
swam for the Ship, just keeping my head above water 
enough to breathe. I got hold of the Eye bolt in the 
rudder, got up onto it, and then into the Cabin window. 
As I came alongside one of the Natives was standing 
between the Night heads pounding on a tin pan. As 
soon as I got into the Cabin window I took oif my clothes, 
they being wet, and to be in a better condition for fight- 



APPENDIX 539 

ing. I then got 2 cutlasses and carried them into the 
Forward Cabin and set them up at the Stairs. I then 
got some powder and balls and Muskets and commenced 
loading them. I could hear the natives walking about 
decks, getting Weapons together to keep off the boats. I 
had got 2 of the Muskets loaded and the Powder into 
the third one, and stepped into the After Cabin to get 
Balls when I heard someone coming down. I stepped to 
the door when I saw one of the Natives had just got to 
the bottom of the stairs, knocking the Muskets down 
that I set up there. Being no light in the Cabin, he 
could not see me so well as I could him. I stepped out 
and got a Cutlass, made a thrust at him, but it being 
dark I did not hurt him very bad. He gave a shout, 
catched hold of me and I hold of him. I stepped back 
into the After Cabin, he following, both of us having 
hold of the Cutlass. I then threw him onto the Cabin 
floor, when he began to sing out for the other Natives 
and I to work at him with my fist and the edge of the 
Cutlass which sawed acrost the back of his neck. I then 
jumped up and started for the Stairs, but he jumped up 
and slashed manfully for a minute or two, but it being 
dark he could not see me nor I him, but he hit me 8 or 
10 times. I then stepped to the foot of the Stairs in 
forward Cabin and looked up and saw one of the Natives 
with a long spade about half way down the Stairs ready 
to cut if he could see anybody. I then took up a Musket 
and shot him through the heart, the Spade coming down 
at the same time and cutting me on the thick part of 
my Arm above the elbow, cutting to the bone. I heard 
the Native in the After Cabin breathe heavily and heard 
from him no more. I steped back into the Cabin, the 
blood running from all parts of my body like a stuck 
dolphin, in the dark, the boats away and one Native on 
deck. Directly he came along with a spade in his hand, 
but seeing one Native dead and seeing the other he went 
forward before I could get a Musket. I then called the 
Boats on board and a light was struck, and the Native 
laying on the Transom in the After Cabin when the Mate 
took a Musket and put a ball through his heart. He was 
dragged on deck and both of them thrown overboard. 
The Captain was found dead on the starboard side 



540 APPENDIX 

abreast of the after part of the Main rigging, his head 
nearly severed from his body and mangled by the Hogs, 
pieces of scull laying on deck. I then had my wounds 
dressed, being about 15 in number, my body being all 
over blood, both Cabin floors being covered with blood 
and the Starboard side of the deck. The next morning 
the Captain was buried with the usual ceremonies and 
the other Native found stowed away between decks and 
put in Irons and the Ship headed for Sidney. There we 
arrived 22nd of Dec, 1842. We delivered our Native up 
to the American Consul. We left the 6th of Jan., the 
Mate Thomas H. Smith, taking command and I am sec- 
ond mate. My wounds got healed up about the time we 
went into Sidney. We have now about 500 Blls of Sperm 
Oil on board. 

But how long we shall be out is more than I can say. 
I have enjoyed very good health since we left Sidney 
except my Right hand which is so that I can hardly hold 
a pen. 

We have got a good crew on board and I am in hopes 
that we shall do something as we are on good ground. I 
have not time to write more as I am holding paper in 
my hand. Give my respects to all Enquiring friends, 
etc. 

B. Clough. 



J. Natahu to the Colorado Tax Commission * 

[JAPANESE ENGLISH] 

"Hon tex comision and Hon comision bord and kart- 
rite: Gents: This respectfy say that mi go devil motor- 
cickle is maid too much in taxe ritin receev from you. 
Trade fur it 5 years long with 2 hog. they ded, it now 
ded. run thrue stcky fence in ditch, no koff, no go. You 
bon hed kum take him. no pay so dam much as Hon 
comision say in ritin on ded go devil. You kum tak em 
hole ranch. 

J. Natahu." 

* Mr. Cartwright, tax assessor of Otero County, had been instructed 
by the Colorado Tax Commission to increase the valuation of all 
motorcycles. 



W4S 



APPENDIX 541 

G. Matsuko* to the San Francisco "Chronicle" 

["pro-nothings"] 
I wish you will preach to throw all of the near-Ameri- 
cans and pro-nothings in the Bay; do no longer handle 
the half-breed with kid words. . . . Ever since I arrive 
in this land of free I am learning more to regret that I 
am not born here, so I can sign name Smith or likewise. 
I wish to be best American money can buy. It makes 
me blushful now to think I do no more than refrain from 
best food. I have admiration for them which wears but- 
ton saying, 'I owe for Liberty Bond,' and I make loud 
cheer for him. This is the lifetime to raise hell for Ger- 
mans, and I beg you assisting. 

G. Matsuko. 



Sergeant C. B. Curtis to His Mother 

[a rhyming letter] 
With the American Expeditionary Forces^ 

"Somewhere in France/' 

April 13, 1918. 
Dear Ma: 

Just a line to let you know that the boys are on the go 
and the war is still in progress over here. We'll soon get 
that sour quince — Kaiser William's young Crown Prince 
and we'll hang him 'side of William by the ear. All the 
boys are well and fine and the grub is right in line. We 
should worry what the Huns may have to say. We will 
soon be sailing back with a whiz, a whang and whack, 
to our home — the good old U. S. A. 

We lie in our bunks at night by the glowing candle's 
light and hear the cannon's rumble long and low. Are 
we in it? Well I guess: Shall we stay? Our answer — 
"Yes!" We shall stay till every Hun has gone below! 
Out of all this din and fuss Yankee land looks good to 
us; but we're glad to stay to help our Allies win. With 
our cannon at our back, we will run to the attack and 
we'll drive the Germans homeward with a vim. 

* Mr. Wallace Irwin assures the editor that H. Togo had nothing to 
do with the letter signed G. Matsuko. 



542 APPENDIX 

This is sure a fine old land — grass and trees on every 
hand and the grass is green as grass can ever be. All the 
flowers in the dell, violets and yellow bell, as you hike 
along, each one you'll surely see. Tho the grass is green 
beneath and the vines all twine their wreath, let me tell 
you what above us may be seen. High among the snowy 
clouds with their purring smooth and loud, flies the ever 
dreaded human bird-machine. Round and round they 
circle high till it seems they pierce the sky, then with 
curves and loop-the-loops they drop. Will the wonders of 
this age written on old history's page, never lessen, never 
weaken, never stop ? 

At my desk so rough and crude — made of boards my 
own hands hewed — day by day I sit and labor as of old. 
It seems so much like home that it seems that I must 
roam — then I stir and find my dreams grow old. Never 
mind, my honey girl, if the things are in a whirl — I'll be 
with you when the yuletide comes around. There'll be a 
hot time in the State with the Fifty-fourth for bait and 
we'll raise the blooming roof right off the town. 

Well, 'tis time to go to bed with the moon-light over- 
head and the lights will soon be out I greatly fear. I 
would write you often, pet, but the mail that you would 
get would be all bunched up, as mail goes slowly here. 
Just remember I am well and we'll give the Germans 

H , then we'll march back o'er the fields of heather; 

for a fellow can't feel bad — only just a little sad — for 
this sure is what you'd call real weather. 

Haven't heard yet from the States but of course it's 
not to^late and the ships are surely needed for the food. 
Give my love to all the girls with their fair and golden 
curls — but keep the most for you — I knew you would. 
Tell my Pa he mustn't fret, I'll be working with him yet. 
Now the light is burning low, so I must quit. Love to 
all — it's getting late. Gee, this life is surely great. So 
long. Mumsy, — rest tomorrow — there I fit. Pray for all 
the boys at war — pray for what we're fighting for — iot 
prayers are what will win this war, I'll bet. Wish that 
you were here to see all this peachy scenery. 

I remain, as ever, just your loving 

Chet. 



APPENDIX 543 

P. S. — Gee, this is sure a day of days, in many, many, 
many ways, for lo I got three letters from the States. 
One was numbered No. 4. Gee, I wish there had been 
more, for my mother wrote the letter, sure as fates. You 
should ought to heard me holler when I saw a Yankee 
dollar lying safely there between the folds. And before 
I'm leaving here I shall buy a souvenir, for Yankee money 
here is good as gold. I accept with many thanks and 
shall change it into francs when I strike the first Y. M. 
C. A. If I do not close this note it will never reach the 
boat, and you'll sure "be out of luck," as we all say. Love 
again. 

C. B. C. 

French Soldiers to a Benefactress ^ 
["your brothers are fighting at our side"] 

[1917] 
^'Madame la Presidente: 

The cases that you have been good enough to send us 
have arrived in Valence. Thank you with all our hearts. 
We are very proud to wear the superb pajamas that we 
owe to your generosity. For a long time we have not 
been so elegant. We are almost as chic as Americans! 
Since the beginning of the war, you have busied your- 
self in making life less hard and now that your brothers 
are fighting at our side and dying for our beautiful 
France, you, working indefatigably — you clothe us with 
warm and pretty clothes. We would like to thank you 
in some better way, but we are, Madame, only poor, grate- 
ful wounded, who like you very much. Please be our 
interpreter to the women of your country. And be as- 
sured of our profound respects and our deep gratitude." 

* This letter, written in English, is signed by thirteen wounded men 
in a hospital in Valence. 



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